A letter from hunger striking Prisoner Fikret Akar

A SHORT STORY OF HUNGER FROM SELF-DISCIPLINE TO A TOOL FOR ACHIEVING RIGHTS

“As the spade reveals the water hidden beneath the earth, so hunger reveals the fountain of understanding and discernment, and hunger is the best horse to lead the journey to its destination. But it needs a little training by a skilful hand.”
Seyid Burhanettin (Mevlana’s teacher)

Seyed Burhanettin said the above almost a thousand years ago. In the conditions of that time, it was aimed to reach a stronger personality by disciplining the ego with hunger. We know that Sheikh Bedreddin entered the ordeal room and starved for 40 days with only water and olives, clarified his thoughts, defeated his ego, clarified his goals and purified his fears and anxieties that hindered him.
In other words, in the ordeal room, the pains of purification from the dirt and rust of the old and the birth of the new are suffered. Since the richness of that period manifested itself in eating and drinking and abundance, it is also seen as a symbol of the ambition and passion to have worldly blessings. Hunger becomes a symbol of human will and self-control against worldly blessings. Therefore, hunger is not only not eating.
Hunger is the door to controlling the ego, not coveting worldly goods, being free from personal ambition, anger and whims, and living an honest, just, principled and honourable life. For this reason, the competent hand that should educate hunger is not a dietician! It is a person who has passed through this door before, who has the will, the courage and the determination to do what is good, what is beautiful, what is right, under all kinds of difficult conditions and at the risk of heavy costs, instead of personal ambition.

Hunger for self-discipline dates back to much older times. With the transition to settled life, humanity started to solve the hunger problem to some extent by advancing in agriculture and animal farming. The products obtained from these endeavours were enough to feed him so that he would not starve. However, since it did not produce remedies for natural events such as drought, floods, etc., the years of starvation were not few.
In periods when there were not enough crops, there were mass deaths due to starvation. They interpreted the cause of the famine, which was caused by the fact that science had not yet developed to the level of explaining natural phenomena, as the gods punishing them. The gods were punishing and disciplining humanity with famine for not being grateful for the blessings they offered them, for being greedy, immoral, for deviating from the good, the beautiful and the righteous.

In addition to rituals such as sacrifices and offerings to appease the anger of the gods and to express gratitude, fasting has also gained an important place. Although it has different nuances such as not eating solid food, not eating meat, not eating or drinking anything at certain hours, the ritual of fasting has emerged in almost all cultures.
Especially the priests, in order to express their gratitude to the gods for their blessings and not to anger the gods with their greed, established fasting at certain intervals and in certain seasons as a requirement of worship. Today, fasting is practised in almost every religion, albeit with different characteristics.
The ritual of fasting, which began to be kept in order to express gratitude to the gods and to appease their anger, turned into a method of self-discipline and education as cultures developed and evolved. Seyid Bedrettin expresses this fact. The aim is not to starve, but to control one’s motives, impulses, whims, desires and needs.
The most basic and primitive motive of human beings is the motive of survival. In order to realise this, there is a need to meet the body’s energy needs, that is, food. Only after a person is fed can he/she turn to other activities that will fulfil his/her other needs. The most basic job is to feed oneself. Our people have named this fact as ‘the fight for bread’.

With class-based societies, humanity has been divided into two: those who cause hunger and those who are left hungry. Those who starve have continued to discipline large masses of people with hunger since the first moments of the emergence of classes. Those who have the power to starve, i.e. the rulers, have imposed people to constantly run after bread by offering only as much as they can meet their daily needs, thus enabling them to rule in this way. People who barely make a daily living are unable to think about and demand their other needs. In this way, hunger has been turned into a means of subjugation of the masses by the rulers.

And sometimes the weapon also shoots its owner. Hunger, which is used as a weapon of mass intimidation in the hands of the rulers, turns into an act of claiming rights against the rulers. In post-medieval Ireland, the poor people, especially women, who had suffered injustice at the hands of the aghas and lords, would sit at the door of the agha’s and lord’s mansion and castle without eating or drinking in order to get their rights.
They ask for their rights to be paid. Until his right is paid, they expose the injustice done by the agha, the gentleman by starving themselves to death if necessary. The nobility of the agha and the lord, who fall into this situation, becomes a matter of honour. And the oppressed finally wins his right with his resistance. And now hunger has turned into a means of getting rights in the hands of the oppressed.
As the struggle for rights becomes organised, hunger acquires a political content, becomes widespread, and gains quality. Strike emerges on the stage of history as one of the most effective tools in the struggle of the working class for rights against the bourgeoisie. And hunger almost integrates with this effective method and takes the name of hunger strike. The hunger strike becomes one of the most effective means of struggle, especially for the Free Prisoners who have no weapons other than their bodies to resist.
When the conditions reach the point of life and death, when it is imposed to defend one’s rights and existence by risking death for the sake of it, a hunger strike is also carried out to the death. In some cultures this is called a death fast, in others a hunger strike until death. Death fasts have been carried out many times all over the world as a method of obtaining rights and resisting oppression. However, Turkey is probably the country where the most hunger strikes and death fasts have been carried out.
This situation shows the sharpness of the persecution and resistance in Turkey. It would not be an exaggeration to say that after ’80 there was not a single day that was not spent on hunger strike or death fast in Turkish prisons.
Hunger strengthened our will so much that it turned our will into a will of steel. Berkan Abatay was 15 kg when he lost his life on the 589th day of the death fast he started at 85 kg. Day by day, cell by cell, Berkan became the symbol of the will to defeat death. And today, hunger strike is one of the most effective tools of the struggle against well-type isolation.
Today, hunger is one of the biggest indicators of injustice in the world.
While more than one billion people cannot find food on a daily basis and suffer from hunger, one of the biggest health problems of the peoples of imperialist countries is overweight, that is, obesity.
While half of the world is starving, the other half suffers from overeating. However, the world produces enough food for all people, even more.
But billions of people are still starving. This is the most naked picture of injustice and exploitation. Israeli Zionism wants to take over the people of Gaza with hunger. It razed Gaza to the ground with the world’s most modern, state-of-the-art weapons, massacred tens of thousands of people. Nevertheless, it could not take over the people of Gaza. What it could not do with the latest technology weapons, it is trying to do with hunger.
The people of Gaza are hungry! Children, people are starving. Yet the people of Gaza do not surrender. In the past, armies besieging castles used to surrender by starving and dehydrating the people inside the castle. Despite hunger and thirst, the people of Gaza do not surrender.
Why is that? How does it resist? Where does it get this power?
It is a known fact that non-politicised poverty corrupts. The politicisation of poverty and hunger means knowing who starves, why they starve and how to get rid of hunger. Science is now advanced. We are not as helpless as the people of the early ages. Today there is science that can realise production that can feed all the people in the world. Thanks to science we have learnt that the cause of our hunger is not the anger and wrath of the gods. And again, thanks to science, we know and recognise those who starve. Why and how they starve us and how to get rid of them. Knowledge is power.
The man who knows is strong. The people of Gaza know why and how they are being starved. They resist by taking strength from this. Berkan knew why he was forced to starve. He resisted isolation with this consciousness.
Today we can give Seyid Burhanettin the following answer with peace of mind. We have trained the horse of hunger so well that he has memorised the path to victory. He has taught us to reveal the hidden water in the deepest depths of the soil in one move.
We are on the horse of hunger, we are galloping to victory!

“Free Prisoner” Fikret Akar

Today he has been on an infdefinite hungerstrike for 66 days

Corlu Prison, 14.05.2025