Pro-Kurdish Lawmakers Join Prisoner Hunger Strike
Five more lawmakers from Turkey's pro-Kurdish Peace and Democracy Party have joined a hunger strike by hundreds of Kurdish prisoners, a party official said on Saturday
The five new hunger strikers take to 10 the number of high-level BDP officials, 7 of them lawmakers, taking part in the strike.
Around 700 hunger strikers are calling for the lifting of restrictions on the use of Kurdish language but their main demand is improved jail conditions for Abdullah Ocalan, the 62-year old leader of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK).
The PKK is labelled as a terrorist group by Turkey and much of the international community.
"We are concerned, worried (and) frustrated by the deadlock," BDP party co-chair Gulten Kisanak told reporters in the southeastern Kurdish-majority Diyarbakir province.
"We are determined to do our part and fulfill our responsibility for a solution," she added.
The hunger strike, which began on September 12, was "part of the Kurdish right to resistance," party co-chair Selahattin Demirtas said Saturday, Anatolia news agency reported.
He also announced that his party would suspend its participation in parliamentary commissions, but continue to attend general sessions at the assembly.
The BDP decision to join the strike came after Ankara turned down again last week a demand from Ocalan's lawyers to visit him in the prison on the island of Imrali south of Istanbul, where he has been kept in solitary confinement for a year and a half.
On Wednesday, Demirtas told AFP that the prisoners would end the strike if Ankara allowed Ocalan to receive visits, particularly from his lawyers.
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said last week his government would not release Ocalan whom he called a "terrorist chief" and warned the strikers against "blackmail".
Ocalan was charged with treason and sentenced to hang in 1999 but the sentence was commuted to life imprisonment in October 2002 after Turkey abolished the death penalty under pressure from the EU, which Ankara wants to join.
BDP lawmakers are expecting the government to pass legislation allowing the use of Kurdish in courtrooms next week, as well as permission for Ocalan to have his lawyers visit him.
Source: Agence France Presse
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