Kurdish Turkish MP Leyla Guven has ended her hunger strike action on day 200 upon Ocalan’s call. She was taken to the Memorial Hospital in an ambulance. May 26, 2019. Photo: ANF
ANKARA,— Thousands of Kurdish prisoners and activists in Turkey ended their hunger strike against the conditions of jailed militant Kurdish leader Abdullah Ocalan, their representative told pro-Kurdish media on Sunday.
“After the call… we are ending our hunger strikes,” Deniz Kaya said in a statement, quoted by Kurdish news agency ANF, following a call by Ocalan for the hunger strikes to end.
The protest began after Leyla Guven, a lawmaker for the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), launched her hunger strike against Ocalan’s isolation in November.
Until May, Ocalan, who co-founded the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), did not have access to his lawyers for eight years.
After the first visit on May 2, Turkish authorities lifted an official ban on lawyers’ visits. Then on May 22, his lawyers made a second trip to see Ocalan.
Earlier on Sunday, his lawyer Nevroz Uysal read a message from Ocalan on May 22 in which he said the hunger strikes should come to an end after they had “achieved” their goal.
MP Guven said in a statement that although the hunger strike was successful, “our struggle against isolation and our struggle for social peace will continue in all areas”.
Mrs. Guven has ended her hunger strike action on day 200 upon Ocalan’s call.
Guven was taken to the Memorial Hospital in an ambulance. Speaking shortly, the Kurdish politician said “I extend my thanks to everyone who supported this action from the first day to today. With this collective resistance, the peoples of Turkey and democracy of Turkey has prevailed.
Some 3,000 prisoners across different prisons were on hunger strike and only consuming liquids and vitamin B, the HDP said, in solidarity with Guven who began her action while in custody and continued after she was released earlier this year.
Eight people also killed themselves over the issue, according to the party.
Kaya said 30 prisoners who had begun a “death fast” in April and May — only consuming water with sugar and salt — would also end their action.
Kurds see Ocalan, called “leader of the Kurdish people” as a living symbol of the Kurdish cause in Turkey.
The PKK took up arms in 1984 against the Turkish state, which still denies the constitutional existence of Kurds, to push for greater autonomy in Turkish Kurdistan for the Kurdish minority who make up around 22.5 million of the country’s 79-million population. More than 40,000 Turkish soldiers and Kurdish rebels, have been killed in the conflict.
A large Kurdish community in Turkey and worldwide openly sympathise with PKK rebels and Abdullah Ocalan, who founded the PKK group in 1974 and currently serving a life sentence in Turkey, has a high symbolic value for most Kurds in Turkey and worldwide according to observers.
Ocalan was caught in February 1999 in Kenya and jailed several months later after he was found guilty of treason, separatism and murder.
Despite the almost complete isolation, Ocalan is still a key figure of the Kurdish insurgency and the movement generally in the region.
Copyright © 2019, respective author or news agency, Ekurd.net | AFP