International Solidarity with the Resistance to Isolation in Turkey

Diario Socialista, a newspaper of expression and information for the Socialist Movement in Spanish language, published a news article to spread the voice of the prisoners on death fast and hungerstrike in Turkey. INTERNATIONAL SOLIDARITY WILL DEFEAT OPPRESSION!

Original article in Spanish: Presos políticos en Turquía en huelga de hambre extrema contra el régimen de aislamiento carcelario

English translation:

Political prisoners in Turkey on extreme hunger strike against solitary confinement

Human rights groups warn that several inmates are at risk of death after more than 200 days of hunger strike. They call for international pressure to stop systematic torture in high-security prisons.

Twelve political prisoners in Turkey have been on an indefinite hunger strike for months to denounce the conditions of extreme isolation to which they are subjected in the so-called S and Y prisons, as denounced this weekend by the international collective IS4PP (International Solidarity for Political Prisoners). Three of them are in critical condition and two, Fikret Akar and Serkan Onur Yılmaz, are at imminent risk of death after more than 200 and 340 days respectively without eating solid food.

The statement, released on October 20, denounces that “dozens of political prisoners have been forcibly transferred in the last two years to isolation prisons, where they spend 23 hours a day alone in small cells, without sufficient air or light.” According to IS4PP, this regime “is not a temporary disciplinary measure, but a permanent punishment aimed at the physical and psychological destruction” of prisoners. The organization claims that such conditions violate the UN Convention against Torture and the European Convention on Human Rights.

Among the most serious cases, that of Fikret Akar, on hunger strike for 205 days in the high-security prison of Karatepe (Çorlu), who “can hardly stand anymore and his body does not absorb sugar, his only source of energy”, according to the text. Serkan Onur Yılmaz, who has been in total fasting for 344 days, was transferred from Antalya prison to Bolu type F prison, but continues his protest “to demand the transfer of his eight companions who are still in solitary confinement”. Both cases, the organization warns, could lead to imminent deaths.

IS4PP and other Turkish human rights groups are calling internationally for Turkey’s Ministry of Justice, led by Yılmaz Tunç, to immediately end isolation and transfer prisoners to ordinary modules. In Turkey, lawyers’ associations, parliamentarians and organisations such as the Human Rights Association (İHD) have already described these practices as a form of covert death penalty. The campaign includes a public petition in Change.org under the title Stop torture in Turkey’s S and Y type isolation prisons, with which they seek to increase pressure on Ankara and prevent further deaths in prison.

ABOUT THE DIARIO SOCIALISTA:

The socialist newspaper is distributed throughout Spain. The socialist movement emerged in the Basque Country a few years ago, led by a group of young people who disagreed with the social democratic drift of the Basque nationalist left and reclaimed their communist identity. They have gained a lot of strength, especially among young people. Their project has been taken up by young people in Catalonia, Galicia, Castile… creating similar organisations and coordinating their efforts. The socialist newspaper is the mouthpiece for all of them.