People’s Law Bureau explains the reasons for immediate life risk of their client Serkan Onur Yilmaz

The People’s Law Bureau tells us why their client Serkan Onur Yılmaz, who is on the 283rd day of a death fast and getting closer to death with each passing day, demanding the closure of “well-type” prisons.

• What are his demands?

• What are these well-type prisons?

These prisons are built as three-story facilities. They contain single-person and three-person cells. While political prisoners are mostly held in single cells, the three-person cells are equipped with cameras that even monitor the bed and bathroom.Unlike F-type prisons, well-type prisons have no “exercise yards” (outdoor areas). The absence of such spaces means that inmates are kept in narrow cells for 23 hours a day without access to fresh air or sunlight. This also means they cannot walk or exercise.

The aim of well-type prisons is to completely cut off communication between prisoners and the outside world. That’s why they are built far from city centers, making visits by family and friends extremely difficult. Sometimes, for just a one-hour visit, families are forced to travel a total of 20 hours round trip. Due to health issues or financial hardship, many families are unable to see their loved ones. This is another dimension of isolation.

In well-type prisons, the right to meet with fellow inmates is often taken away through disciplinary punishments. Visits are banned or blocked by the police under the pretext of “security investigations.” In some of these prisons, even shouting between prisoners is prevented by emptying out entire corridors. The goal here is to ensure that the prisoner has no human contact at all-isolating them, leaving them alone, individualizing them, and “cleansing” them of their political beliefs.

An intercom has been placed in cells to reduce even contact with guards. Isolation prisons like F-type or well-type prisons are essentially facilities designed through scientific studies backed by imperialist powers. Basic human needs like “being an active subject” and “socializing” are banned in these prisons.

As a result, it is a known fact that prisoners under heavy isolation – particularly those imprisoned for non-political crimes – suffer from severe psychological issues, go insane, or commit suicide. However, unlike political prisoners, they are considered “voiceless” and their cases rarely come to public at.

These prisons, which cause severe physical and psychological damage, are not only a problem for our client Serkan Onur Yılmaz or other hunger strikers. Revolutionaries, democrats, and civil society organizations must escalate their struggle against such prisons. Serkan Onur Yılmaz, who is on the 283rd day of his death fast, has been transferred, yet continues his fast in order to demand the transfer of his fellow inmates still in Antalya YGC (High Security Prison) or “pit-type prison” – those who are too ill or elderly to carry out a hunger strike themselves.