BY VIV MILEY
Twenty thousand people marched through Istanbul on May Day in support of left-wing hunger strikers in Turkey's jails. Twenty two prisoners have starved themselves to death since October, in a protest against authorities' decision to confine them in "coffin cells".
The two latest victims, who both died on May 7, were Cafer Tayyar Bektas, who died in an Ankara prison after fasting for 200 days, and Huseyin Kayaci, who died after 148 days without solid food. Both had been members of banned leftist organisations.
The crisis within the nation's prison system is causing major problems for the Turkish government of Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit, which is also seeking to enforce the deeply unpopular terms of an International Monetary Fund economic rescue package and to qualify for membership of the European Union.
Turkey's harsh anti-democratic laws and its prison system have come under repeated fire from prisoners' rights groups, political organisations, human rights advocates and the EU itself. But, as the death toll mounts, the government shows no signs of giving in to prisoners' demands.
From the beginning, the government has said the problems in the prisons have been mainly due to the set-up of the old dormitory-style prisons, which house up to 30 prisoners in a cell.
These communal cells have allowed political prisoners from leftist Kurdish and Islamic groups, who make up a large proportion of the country's prison population, to resist assaults and abuses by guards and to shut the guards out.
In order to reassert its authority and break political prisoners' organisation, the government has spent $60 million on building new "F-type" prisons with isolation cells, which house only one to three prisoners.
Political prisoners greeted the announcement that they would be moved into the new prisons with militant opposition, fearful that in the new isolation cells they would be targeted for systematic abuse.
In response, members of the DHKP-C (Revolutionary People's Liberation Party-Front), an outlawed leftist party, called a "death fast" in October, to demand the reversal of the move to F-type prisons. The number of "death fasters" has since grown to 250, with prisoners refusing all food and only taking salted or sugared water and vitamin B1.
On December 19, the government ordered a full-scale military assault of 20 prisons across Turkey, grotesquely named "Return to Life", with the aim of removing the prisoners and putting an end to the hunger strike.
The military used helicopters, bulldozers, machine guns, tear gas, chemical and explosive grenades against prisoners in a battle that raged for four days and claimed the lives of over 30 prisoners and two guards.
The surviving prisoners were then forcibly transferred to the new prisons — but the hunger strike could not be broken.
The prisoners' worst fears about what would await them in their new cells have since been proven true. The Human Rights Foundation of Turkey, one of the country's most respected human rights bodies, has since treated a large number of prisoners who have been subjected to torture, the majority of whom have been political inmates.
Prisoners have said that they have been beaten, baton-raped, left isolated without human contact for days on end, made to stand to attention during roll call (especially hard on the death fasters), and had the electricity to their cells shut off leaving them in the dark and extreme cold.
The foundation claims that the guards act with impunity, foundation chairperson Yavuz Onen stating "Cases against security personnel either last too long or end up without conviction. In this light they act as they want to; they kill inmates and they are not questioned."
The international response to the torture and the deaths of the hunger strikers has so far been weak, with neither the EU nor Amnesty International willing to take significant action against the Turkish government. Amnesty International's London offices were even occupied for seven hours on April 27 by relatives of the hunger strikers, in protest at the group's lack of determination to take action.
Onen has criticised the attitude of EU governments, saying that "Western countries are viewing the F-types as a reform and support it within this framework".
"They are thinking that the Turkish government has spent $60 million to reform their prisons. They believe the F-type prison provides better humanitarian conditions and saying that hundreds of inmates were staying together in anti-humanitarian conditions in the wards system", he said. "The Western world's focus is technical."
The Turkish government is still paying hardball with the prisoners. Replying to questions from the opposition in the Turkish parliament, justice minister Sami Turk conceded that regulations were needed to bring the F-type prisons into line with EU standards but said that such measures would not be brought in until the hunger strike is ended.
For its part, though, the prisoners are also determined not to give in, saying that they will continue their death fast until the government respects their human rights and reverses its prison policy.