More MPs to join hunger strikes

ANKARA - Hürriyet Daily News

BDP lawmakers Emine Ayna (C) and Özdal Üçer continue their hunger strike in the southern province of Diyarbakır. DHA photo

A number of lawmakers from the Peace and Democracy Party (BDP) are set to join hundreds of inmates who have been on an indefinite hunger strike for 60 days as of Nov. 10, with BDP co-chair Gültan Kışanak calling on the government to take rapid and urgent steps to resolve the crisis.

“Hunger strikes will come to a very critical phase on their 60th day. We cannot bear the conscientious and ethical responsibility of waiting while people are under life-threatening situations. We are ready to do what is needed for a resolution, but we have reached a conclusion that we cannot contribute to the solution of the issue by just waiting,” Kışanak told the Hürriyet Daily News on Friday.

“We don’t want to lose our hope, we want to resolve this issue. Everything would turn upside down if one person dies, so the government must take rapid and urgent steps,” she added.

The most rapid step would be allowing lawyers to visit convicted leader of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) Abdullah Öcalan, who is serving a life sentence on İmralı Island in the Marmara Sea, according to Kışanak. “The government should not perceive such action as a concession. If lawyers are allowed, existing legal obligations will be fulfilled,” she said.

Seven lawmakers are to start a hunger strike in the southeastern province of Diyarbakır on Nov. 10, BDP deputy parliamentary group chair Pervin Buldan told the Daily News, adding that they would continue their endeavors for a solution to the problem. BDP co-chair Selahattin Demirtaş is likely to join the hunger strike, according to party sources.

Some 700 inmates are staging hunger strikes in Turkey’s 67 prisons, demanding an end to the isolation of Öcalan and an end to restrictions on the use of Kurdish in courts and education. Öcalan’s lawyers have not been allowed to visit for the last 15 months.

BDP lawmakers Emine Ayna and Özdal Üçer joined the hunger strike on Nov. 8, on the grounds that the government has taken no concrete steps on the issue despite promising to do so.

Waiting for Erdoğan

Justice Minister Sadullah Ergin said on Nov. 8 that a legal arrangement paving the way for use of mother tongues in courts would be sent to Parliament as soon as Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan returns home from abroad.

Kışanak, for her part, praised Ergin’s efforts to ease the crisis, while expressing his despair over Erdoğan’s attitude towards hunger strikes.

“The justice minister showed a humanistic approach to the hunger strikes and he gave exact information over the issue. But the prime minister described the hunger strikes as ‘showing off.’ I understand that the justice minister is in a tight spot, but we have to do something before it’s too late,” she said.

Meanwhile, Öcalan’s lawyers’ appeal to the prosecutor’s office in Bursa to visit their client on Friday was rejected on the grounds that the coaster that is used to carry lawyers from Mudanya to İmralı Island is broken.