Another prisoner commits suicide in support of Ocalan

Sirac Yuksek, who began participating in a hunger strike on 1 March 2019, committed suicide
at the Osmaniye Type T Prison in the southern province of Osmaniye on Tuesday. He was buried under police watch with some family members present, according to a report by Pro- Kurdish news agency, Mezopotamya (MA).

Leyla Guven, an MP of the opposition pro-Kurdish People’s Democratic Party (HDP), initiated
“a partial and indefinite hunger strike” on 7 November 2018, demanding an end to the isolation of Abdullah Ocalan – jailed leader of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) – by the Turkish government. Guven was on the 147th day of her hunger strike when Yuksek ended his life.

Guven called for an end to the suicides after the fourth person committed suicide in an attempt to draw attention to the isolation of Ocalan.

Yuksek was first detained on 25 May 2016 and arrested during the curfews in the predominantly Kurdish southeastern region of Turkey. On 16 January 2018, during his trial, Yuksek condemned the isolation of Ocalan in a written defense statement. He later denied the statement, claiming that it was forcibly signed under torture.

“My lawyer had no idea about my defense statement as I was not allowed to meet with him
for almost a year. He was only informed when we spoke briefly in the courtroom,” said Yuksek during the hearing

Ocalan, who has been serving a life sentence since 1999, has been held mostly in solitary confinement in Imrali, an island prison in the Marmara Sea. He has not been allowed to see his lawyers since 27 July 2011, and the last time he could see his family was in 2014.

He has also been barred from meeting with pro-Kurdish People’s Democratic Party (HDP) lawmakers since April 2015 when the peace process, aimed at ending the decades-long conflict between the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) and PKK, failed.

PKK, formed by Ocalan in the early 1980s to win an independent Kurdish state in the predominantly Kurdish region southeast of the country is labeled a terrorist organization by Turkey.

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from IPA NEWS https://ipa.news/2019/04/04/another-prisoner-commits-suicide-in-support-of-ocalan/