Mainstream News On Turkish Politica

[kurd-l at burn.ucsd.edu]

From: Arm The Spirit <ats at locust.cic.net>
Subject: Mainstream News On Turkish Political Prisoner Hungerstrike

Mounting Death Toll Highlights Turk Rights Record

By Jonathan Lyons

Ankara, Turkey (Reuter - July 25, 1996) The death toll in
Turkey's two-month-old prison hunger strike jumped to five on
Thursday, turning the spotlight on the country's human rights
record.
     The five were part of a group of more than 300 leftists in
around 30 jails who have pledged to fast to the death to demand
the closure of notorious Eskisehir prison - dubbed The Coffin by
inmates - and to protest against general prison conditions.
     Dozens of hunger strikers are now reported by lawyers to be
in a critical condition.
     Inmate Ali Ayata died in Bursa prison, his lawyer told
Reuters, while human rights activists said Huseyin Demircioglu
starved himself to death in Ankara Central Prison.
     Three other hunger strikers died earlier this week.
     The prisoners and their lawyers also charge prison officials
with dispersing leftist inmates across the country, depriving
them of family visits and legal counsel.
     "The Government's Disgrace", said the secularist daily
Milliyet on its front page, highlighting the risks for Turkey's
new Islamist-led coalition.
     "Where is Sevket Kazan, what kind of justice minister are
you?" demanded prominent columnist Mehmet Ali Birand in the daily
Sabah, another secularist paper.
     "People are dying before your eyes and you do not lift a
finger. What kind of Moslems are you?" Birand also called on the
prisoners to break their deadly fast.
     Minister Kazan, of the Islam-based Welfare Party, has so far
refused to close Eskisehir, saying conditions there exceeded
Western standards and arguing that its use of individual cells
kept leftist prisoners under firm control.
     Most Turkish prisons rely on large open wards, which
officials say are difficult to monitor.
     Kazan told state-run Anatolian news agency that prison
inmates had weapons and were trying to draw the security forces
into an operation. "At the necessary time we will do what is
required and show them the authority of the state."
     Turkey's powerful Security Council, chaired by the prime
minister and dominated by the security chiefs, was set to discuss
the mounting crisis at 1100 GMT.
     Turkish and Western rights groups, who regularly criticize
the country's human rights record, frequently cite abuses during
pre-trial detentions and later in the prisons.
     France on Tuesday called for Ankara to improve jail
conditions in response to the hunger strike. Investigators in
Germany have linked recent arson attacks against Turkish-owned
targets to the sympathisers with the striking leftists.
     "Ali Ayata in Bursa prison died at 7 a.m. (0400 GMT) this
morning from the hunger strike", lawyer Ahmet Duzgun Yuksel told
Reuters. Ayata was a member of the Turkish Communist
Party/Marxist Leninist (TKP/ML) urban guerrilla group.
     An official at the Human Rights Association said Demircioglu
died in Ankara Central Prison in the early morning. He had been
held on remand for alleged membership of another far-left group. 
"There are about three people in a critical condition in each (of
about 30) prisons where the hunger strike is taking place",
Yuksel said.
     A group of medical workers outside Ankara Central Jail
clapped their hands slowly in protest at Demircioglu's death,
less than a month after the formation of the coalition government
of Islamist Prime Minister Necmettin Erbakan.
     "It must not be forgotten that the convicts and detainees
are humans. Prison conditions must be improved", Mehmet Altiok,
head of the Ankara Medical Chamber, said outside the prison.     
Hunger strikes are common in Turkey but they often end in
compromise instead of the grisly deaths of recent days. So far
there has been little discussion of force feeding the inmates -
in part out of fear of sparking widespread prison riots.
     Political analysts blame years of state violence and inmate
ill-treatment for the present crisis.
     They say the strong hold of the military, which staged three
coups in the three decades to 1980, and a hardline bureaucracy
dogs efforts to improve Turkey's rights record.

European Media, Opposition Parties Slam Turkey

By Fiona Fleck

Bonn, Germany (Reuter - July 25, 1996) European media and
opposition parties rallied support on Thursday for some 150
Turkish prisoners on hunger strike to protest at political
detentions, but governments were muted in their response.
     In Germany, the country most affected outside Turkey because
of its two million-strong Turkish community, critics poured scorn
on Ankara for what they said were political detentions and human
rights abuses in Turkish prisons.
     "Now there has to be a concession to the hunger strikers'
justifed demand for dignified treatment in prison", said a
commentator on German television (ARD), dismissing the Bonn
government's call on Wednesday to the hunger strikers to give up
their protest.
     Socialist members of the European Parliament said the EU
should threaten to block funds for Turkey in budget talks later
this year. Their leader Pauline Green said she had written to
Turkish Prime Minister Necmettin Erbakan voicing concern over the
deaths of six strikers.
     "The Turkish government have used the institutions of the
European Union to gain what they want and have given nothing of
what they promised in return", Green said.
     Last year, the European parliament allowed an EU customs
union with Turkey to go through after adding amendments meant to
assure that human rights were respected.
     London did not comment on the protest, but British police
said 20 demonstrators had briefly occupied a Turkish Airlines
office in protest against conditions in Turkish jails.
     French officials called on Ankara to find a solution to the
strike that respected human rights but did not elaborate.
     After a third night of firebombings of Turkish shops in
Germany, German media condemned the attacks which prosecutors say
could be the work of Turkish left-wingers showing solidarity with
the protest back home.
     "These attacks on Turkish shops in Germany are senseless and
counter-productive. They arouse anger and misunderstanding here
and could lead to a further escalation of violence in Turkey",
the ARD television commentator said.
     In Strasbourg, Leni Fischer, the President of the European
Council Parliamentary Assembly, called on Turkey to "respect the
European Convention on Human Rights, the rules of the Council of
Europe concerning prisons and to take into account the demands
made by the prisoners..."
     Fischer, who is German, said consultations were underway to
send a delegation of parliamentarians to Turkey to discuss the
issue with authorities there.
     In Turkey's traditional foe Greece, officials slammed
Turkey's human rights record over the strikers' deaths and
appealed to the European Union to intervene.
     German commentators and opposition politicians urged Bonn
and other Western governments not to turn a blind eye to "abuses"
by a NATO ally that is lobbying hard to join the European Union.
     "If several hundred prisoners in a NATO country risk their
lives to protest against the methods of the legal system there,
their Western partners cannot simply look away", the respected
Frankfurter Allgemeine newspaper commented.
     Germany's opposition Social Democrats (SPD) expressed
solidarity with the hunger strikers a day after Turkish
protesters occupied the party's Frankfurt headquarters for five
hours before being ousted by police.
     "The prisoners' central demand is something that must be
adhered to by all civilised people and states, prisons must be
run without human rights violations", Rudolf Bindig, the SPD
human rights spokesman in the German parliament said.

Death Fast No Easy Way Of Dying

By Suna Erdem

Istanbul, Turkey (Reuter - July 25, 1996) Some hunger strikers in
Turkey will be coughing blood, will suffer internal bleeding,
lose their eyesight, hearing and finally lose consciousness in
their "death fast" which has killed six so far, a former prison
hunger striker said on Thursday.
     "A hunger strike is the hardest method of protest", said
Zeynel Polat, 38, who fasted for 70 days to near-death in 1984.
     "Every day, every hour, every second, you are conscious of
going to death...Towards the end, you cough up blood, suffer
internal bleeding and haemorrhoids. The pain is excruciating."
     Three inmates died on Thursday, the 67th day of a "death
fast", bringing to six the death toll for the protest against
Eskisehir high-security prison - where inmates say they are
maltreated - and prison conditions in general.
     "Even if the strike ends today, there are prisoners who can
no longer be saved", said doctor Muharrem Baytimur, a senior
member of the Turkish chamber of medicine.
     "And after 60 days, irreversible damage can appear in
certain organs. For instance, kidney failure, brain damage,
muscle deterioration", he told Reuters.
     More than 300 leftist inmates have been on hunger strike
since May.
     Polat, in jail through most of the 1980s charged with
leftist activities, began a hunger strike in support of the
inmates 14 days ago. He complains only of dizziness so far.
     "Later on, you lose consciousness - first intermittently,
then completely, then you can't move", he told Reuters in an
interview. "I only realised later that I had been unconscious
when you couldn't remember things my friends talked about."
     The first three days are the worst, said Polat, who works
with the radical leftist Kurtulus newspaper, because the body is
still sending hunger signals to the brain. Then the body becomes
accustomed to functioning without food.
     Doctors say while the human body can survive some 90 days on
hunger strike, this is cut to 60 days in prison conditions.
     Days of careful feeding of serums and a special diet brought
Polat back to life: "Make a mistake and you're dead", he says.   
Hunger strikers typically drink water and take salt or sugar
during their action, until they decide to go for a "death fast",
Polat said. "Then the dying process speeds up."
     Prison hunger strikes are common in Turkey, but deaths
rare.
     Turkey's hardline military has staged three coups in the two
decades to 1980, and political analysts blame years of state
violence and inmate ill-treatment - often during lengthy
pre-trial detentions - for the present crisis.
     Polat was jailed in 1982. His trial did not end until 1991.
His case is now under appeal.
     Polat and fellow leftists in Istanbul's Metris jail - one of
several to join the 1984 strike - acted against what they said
were harsh military practises following the 1980 army coup.
     These included forcing prisoners to salute before even the
lowliest of soldiers, recite the national anthem and pray before
eating - and beating them if they did not comply, Polat said.
     "They were tring to homogenise us, to make us give up our
ideals and become slaves of the state. They did not want
opposition", he said. "Which is what they are really trying to do
now, when they say they want to 'reform' people in jails." 

Arsonists Hit Turkish Store In Germany

Bonn, Germany (Reuter - July 25, 1996) Attackers firebombed a
Turkish-owned department store in central Germany and police said
they were investigating the possibility of a link to similar
recent attacks believed to be the work of left-wing Turks.
     A police spokesman said an automatic sprinkler system at the
store in Offenbach, near Frankfurt, put out the fire quickly. No
one was injured and there was little damage, he said.
     Witnesses said five or six people fled the scene after one
of them had thrown a petrol bomb through a shop window.
     Police said they were checking whether the attack was linked
to a string of similar firebomb attacks on Turkish properties
over the last few days.
     Investigators suspect those attacks were carried out by
left-wing Turkish extremists supporting a two-month old hunger
strike by prisoners in their homeland, who are protesting against
living conditions in the jails.

Turkish Anti-Terror Policeman Shot Dead

Ankara, Turkey (Reuter - July 25, 1996) Unknown assailants shot
dead a Turkish anti-terrorist policeman and seriously wounded
another in a drive-by shooting, police said on Thursday.
     A police spokesman told Reuters the policeman died in
hospital after the overnight attack in the western town of Gebze.
     Anatolian news agency said the shooting was carried out by
"terrorists", but the spokesman said it was unclear which group
was responsible or if the incident were connected to a worsening
hunger strike by militant leftist prisoners.
     Two prisoners died in the hunger strike on Thursday, taking
the death toll in the protest over prison conditions to five.