AP/RN Interview On Turkish Hunger Strike
Date: 5th June '01
Name: Joe Steel
Country: Scotland
Force feeding and more deaths in Turkish hunger strike
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An Phoblacht/Republican News
Interview With Gurkan Gur Of IKM
www.ozgurluk.org
Ugur Turkmen is the latest addition to the list of 19 political
prisoners and four relatives who have died as a result of the
hunger strike protest against prison conditions in Turkey. After
being released from Sincan F-type prison on 5 January 2001, Ugur
Turkmen continued his death fast in his home at Mersin. He died
on Sunday, 27 May 2001, on his 204th day of hunger strike. Nearly
300 inmates and family members are still fasting in an attempt to
force the government to reconsider its policy of isolating
political prisoners in Turkey. Many of the fasting prisoners are
being force fed. It has been reported that around 53 political
prisoners have already suffered irreversible brain damage.
The similarities between this protest in Turkey and the Irish
hunger strike in 1981 are striking, which explains the Irish
visit of Gurkan Gur of the Committee for Struggle Against Torture
Through Isolation (IKM) last week. He spoke at a public meeting
in Dublin about the situation in the prisons and on the streets
of Turkey during a meeting hosted by Des Bonass (AT&GWU) and
attended by former hunger striker John Nixon and blanket men
Seanna Breathnach and Tony O'Hara. Photographs covered the walls
of men and women now dead as a consequence of the protests
against the prison regime imposed by Turkey on its political
prisoners.
"When you look at the reasons why the hunger strike is taking
place in Turkey, you find a lot of connections with the struggle
in Irish prisons," said Gur. "There was political status in
Ireland and prison uniforms in Turkey. Then H Blocks in Ireland,
F-type prisons in Turkey: the state is trying to force the
surrender of the revolutionary prisoners and all those who oppose
the Turkish regime. On the other hand, political prisoners are
defending what they believe is right."
The prisoners have been on hunger strike since 20 October last,
anticipating government plans for their transfer to so-called
"F-type" high security prisons - replacing communal ward-type
cells where prisoners enjoyed free association with high security
prisons focused on isolating prisoners.
"Ill-treatment and torture are widespread in Turkish police
stations and gendarmeries, but are comparatively rarely reported
from Turkish prisons," reported the US-based human rights
organisation Human Right Watch in 1999. "No doubt this is partly
explained by the open nature of the ward system since, in Human
Rights Watch's experience worldwide, ill-treatment and torture
tend to flourish in conditions of secrecy". In its report on a
visit to Turkey between 27 February and 3 March 1999, the
European Committee for the Prevention of Torture (CPT) made the
general comment that a high security facility "brings with it a
greater risk of inhuman treatment than is the case with the
average prisoner".
On 19 December, 30 prisoners and two police were killed when
10,000 armed soldiers entered 20 Turkish prisons to break up
non-violent protests being carried out by inmates and transfer
them to the newly constructed F-type prisons. "Do not forget that
when the operation started these people had already spent 62 days
fasting," said Gur. "Most of the people killed when the security
forces stormed the jails died trying to protect the comrades who
were fasting."
Turkish security forces' actions were severely criticised by the
Council of Europe on 16 March. The Council's anti-torture
committee expressed grave concerns about their actions at a
women's detention centre where security forces set fire to a
dormitory and stood by as women prisoners burnt to death. "The
methods employed by the security forces were not in all cases
proportional to the difficulties faced", says the report.
The Justice Ministry then began transferring inmates from the
raided prisons to the first of the F-type prisons, breaking
previous public commitments that they would not take this step
precipitately.
At the four F-type prisons currently in operation - Edirne,
Kandira, Sincan and Tekirdag - prisoners may leave their cells
only once a week if a member of their immediate family visits.
Otherwise, they are held permanently either in single-person or
three-person cells in what has been termed "small group
isolation". They are not allowed any kind of communal activity.
The Turkish establishment is using the excuse of the protest to
further curtail the prisoners' rights. "They have not seen each
other since 19 December and most have not seen their families. A
minority of the political prisoners managed to see their families
for 5 or 10 minutes. Normally it should be one hour, but because
of obstructions like searching visitors three or four times,
again they managed to reach the cubicle there are generaly only
five minutes left," explains Gur.
Gur also described in detail the brutality of prison staff
against prisoners. On 23 April, guards beat Yunus Oezguer, on
hunger strike since his transfer to Sincan F-type Prison, when he
was unable to rise to his feet for roll call, according to his
father. He was subsequently hospitalised for several days,
apparently for injuries resulting from the beating, and has now
been returned to Sincan Prison.
Authorities call the protesters "terrorists" and insist the new
jails, with modern washrooms, kitchens and courtyards, meet the
standards of the EU, which Turkey wants to join. But this protest
is not about prison facilities, but prison conditions.
"Turkey said that the old prisons were not hygienic as prisoners
stayed together in the same cell, but what they want to impose
now is to isolate prisoners from each other and the rest of the
world," said Gur. "There is no way a human being can accept such
a thing. This is our battle line - either F-type prisons are
closed down or we all will die. This is what our prisoners have
said."
The Turkish government, as the British government did in the
1980s, has largely ignored the protesters' petitions. The Turkish
establishment is very much accustomed to Western criticism of its
human rights record -criticisms that always fail to result in
sanctions. Turkey has also shrugged off calls from international
groups, including the Council of Europe, Human Rights Watch and
Amnesty International, to end the seven-month prison crisis.
Although the Turkish Parliament amended an "anti-terrorism law"
on 1 May to allow some political prisoners access to communal
areas, Human Rights Watch, Jonathan Sugden says inmates'
families' report that no prisoners have yet benefited from the
new rule and the lockdown continues.
Turkish Human Rights groups have condemned how the Turkish
government is force-feeding and drugging some 37 hunger strikers
to keep the number of deaths low and to limit international
embarrassment. "So far, 37 of our prisoners have lost their
memories completely. They cannot remember they were in prison,
they cannot remember their families. Some of them think they are
in hospital because they had to undergo some surgery," says Gur.
The Turkish government has tried to maintain a media blackout on
the crisis. Journalists and human rights defenders who have
criticised the prison transfers and reported on the progress of
the hunger strikes have been ill-treated, detained, imprisoned,
and prosecuted. On 27 April the Istanbul-based Voice of Anatolia
radio station was shut down for three months because it had
broadcast a programme on the prison crisis. Branches of the
Turkish Human Rights Association have been closed down, and
officials charged with "supporting illegal armed groups."
Prisoners' relatives have also been persecuted and subjected to
routine humiliation during prison visits.
But the political prisoners and their relatives have made clear
that they will not abandon their protest until F-type prisons are
closed. "There will be a moment when not a single prisoner will
be left in an F-Type prison alive," said Gulkan Gur. "When they
started the fast on 20 October 2000 they said 'no matter what, we
will not go to those cells alive'. They were attacked, tortured
and taken to the F-Type prisons, but by continuing their
resistance they are keeping their word and saying that they are
ready to die because they will not accept their prisons or
inhuman treatment. Our struggle will continue until victory. We
have a slogan, which says that we are right and we will win".
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