From: Jonupstny-AT-aol.com
Date: Wed, 24 Jul 1996 22:14:47 -0400
Subject: Hunger Strike


      By Suna Erdem 

    ISTANBUL, July 24 (Reuter) - A fatal hunger strike in Turkish prisons may
be organised by militant leftist ringleaders, but years of state violence and
ill-treatment led to the present flare-up, analysts said on Wednesday. 

    ``There may be political reasons for this...But in the end these young
people are fasting and accepting death as a consequence,'' said analyst
Mehmet Altan of the two-month strike. 

    ``Why is this so? We see state terror every night on television -- we see
police kicking, beating and pulling the hair of young girls whom they have
taken into custody anyway. Violence is on the rise and things are going to
get worse.'' 

    Three inmates have died so far in the hunger strike, which began in May
to protest the dispersal of leftist inmates throughout prisons in Turkey,
particularly Eskisehir prison in the west of the country, where inmates say
they are maltreated. 

    Hunger strikes are very common in Turkish jails, but deaths from these
fasts are rare. 

    ``If people don't die of hunger strikes then they die of the bad
practises in jails -- they are beaten and mistreated. Dying of a hunger
strike is almost better,'' analyst Umit Firat told Reuters. 

    Analysts say the strong hold of the military, which has staged three
coups in the three decades to 1980, and a hardline bureaucracy ensures
Turkey's rights situation does not improve. 

    Just in the past few months, police have been seen to beat, kick and even
shoot at demonstrators, including women, students, civil servants and
teachers. 

    ``If that is what they do before our eyes, I hate to think what they do
in secret,'' Altan said. 

    Rights groups, who regularly slam Turkey's shaky rights record, complain
of abuses in Turkish jails. 

    But Justice Minister Sevket Kazan said on Wednesday some militant
leftists in Istanbul's Bayrampasa jail were forcing the others to continue
the hunger strike. 

    ``It looks like this action in prisons is being directed by a centre in
Bayrampasa, by a terror centre inside,'' Kazan was quoted by the state-run
Anatolian news agency as saying. 

    Kazan said earlier some Turkish prisons, including Istanbul's Bayrampasa,
had become ``centres for terrorist education, not places where people serve
out punishment.'' 

    He said Bayrampasa was controlled by 850-900 prisoners, and that several
inmates had mobile phones and fax machines, used to coordinate between
prisons and organise protests. 

    Analysts say the current agitation was able to go so far thanks to the
sprawling ward system of Turkish prisons and corrupt prison officials, who
were in a position to supply faxes and telephones. 

    ``Our prisons are more like prison camps, with 40, 50, 100 people per
ward,'' Firat said. ``Try enforcing anything there and you face the joint
resistance of 50 people.'' He said groups could communicate and plan actions
easily in these wards. 

    ``Try putting them into individual cells, and you are faced with bedlam
-- Eskisehir has small cells, and that is a major reason behind (prisoners')
objection to it.'' 

    Turkey's sluggish legal system, which leaves defendents in jail for years
while their trials drag on for sometimes trivial reasons and an inconsistent
penal system exacerbated unease among prisoners, analysts and politicians
say. 

    ``You really need deep-seated solutions to this problem,''
social-democrat MP Ercan Karakas told Reuters. ``But at the moment to prevent
the death of more people, their urgent demands could be met...It could at
least be ensured that they are not dispersed to towns far from the court
hearing their case.'' 

09:41 07-24-96


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