Turkey bans rally for Kurdish MP Leyla Guven on hunger strike
A member of the Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) reacts next to policemen during a demonstration in solidarity with a Kurdish MP Leyla Guven on hunger strike in Diyarbakir city, Turkish Kurdistan, February 15, 2019. Photo: AFP
DIYARBAKIR-AMED, Turkey Kurdistan,— Turkish police on Friday prevented supporters from rallying outside the home of a Kurdish lawmaker on hunger strike for 100 days.
The protest bid coincides with the 20th anniversary of the capture of Kurdish leader Abdullah Ocalan, who is jailed in a notorious prison island near Istanbul.
Leyla Guven of the Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), launched her action on November 8, 2018 while in jail to protest against Ocalan’s prison conditions.
She was freed last month under judicial supervision but continued her protest, refusing any treatment. Guven, 55, is consuming only sugared or salted water.
Police on Friday blocked supporters from approaching Guven’s house in the main Kurdish city of Diyarbakir in Turkish Kurdistan (Bakur) after a rally called by the HDP, an AFP correspondent said.
“The biggest task ahead of us today is to turn every aspect of life into an arena for struggle and support hunger strikes at the highest level,” HDP MP Dilan Dirayet Tasdemir said.
“This dark picture and severe conditions of fascism can only be broken through our organised struggle,” Tasdemir said.
More than 200 prisoners are on hunger strike to protest what they call Ocalan’s isolation, according to the HDP.
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, who was arrested 20 years ago, is serving a life sentence on Imrali island, close to Istanbul. Ocalan was caught in Kenya outside the Greek embassy in Nairobi on February 15, 1999 by Turkish secret service agents after attempting to seek asylum in Europe.
Kurds see Ocalan, called “leader of the Kurdish people” by his followers and “head of the PKK terrorist organisation and separatist leader” by Turkish officials and media, 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.
Fighting in the region intensified between Turkish security forces and the PKK after the collapse of a two-year ceasefire in 2015.
‘Fundamental right’
Turkish authorities last month allowed Ocalan’s brother Mehmet to see him, the first visit in over two years, but the jailed leader’s lawyers said it was not enough.
“We cannot see a family visit that came in two years as something that ends isolation. That was a meeting which came after the reaction of democracy advocates and hunger strikes,” Emran Emekci, one of Ocalan’s lawyers, told an Istanbul press conference.
“Meeting with family members is a fundamental right. There should be no need for hunger strikes… but unfortunately we need that resistance,” he added.
An international peace delegation made up of unionists, human rights activists and former politicians on Friday met with Ocalan’s lawyers in Istanbul.
The delegation met with Guven in Diyarbakir this week but they said no government official would meet with them.
“The situation of the hunger strikers is at a dangerous point and it is imperative that Turkey acts to end the isolation (of Ocalan) now before there is further violence and bloodshed,” said Ogmundur Jonasson, former Iceland justice minister.
Copyright © 2019, respective author or news agency, AFP | Ekurd.net
Comments