12 July 2001 Edition

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Republican ex-POWs back Turkish hunger strikers

BY PEADAR WHELAN

As the death toll in the Turkish hunger strike rises on an almost daily basis, a former republican POW, Alec McCrory, spoke to An Phoblacht about his recent visit to Turkey and his meetings with some of the hunger strikers.

Among one of the most harrowing yet inspiring aspects of McCrory's visit was the courage shown by Zehra Kulaksiz, one of a number of relatives of the prisoners also taking part in the mass fast, who he met just days before she died on 29 June.

The 22-year-old died 12 hours after McCrory and his delegation left the country.

Canan Kulaksiz Zehra's 19-year-old sister also died on the hunger strike earlier in the year. He was also inspired by 45-year-old Sevgi Erdogan. Erdogan, who has been on the death fast for over 245 days, is the best known of the hunger strikers.

Erdogan told McCrory: ``When I learned of the Irish struggle and of Bobby Sands, I became very conscious that our struggle against fascism and imperialism was a struggle across the globe. I am one with you'', she stated.

Erdogan had been working in an open, legal cultural organisation when she was arrested in a police operation. Two people who were with her were shot dead and she was remanded to Usak prison.

Eventually she was sentenced to 12 and a half years imprisonment and joined the death fast.

McCrory met the women in a death fast house, in Istanbul, from which four other women had died. The death fast houses were set up by prisoners released by the government in an attempt to break the hunger strikes. However the prisoners and their relatives, determined to maintain the fast, set up bases in what they called death fast houses and continued their protest.

Speaking to An Phoblacht, McCrory explained that the hunger strike, which the Turkish political prisoners embarked on in October last year, is aimed at resisting the introduction of new F Type prisons for political prisoners.

Interestingly, the impetus for the introduction of these new prisons came from the European Union, as a way of Turkey demonstrating its commitment to cleaning up its human rights record to help its entry into the EU.

But, explained McCrory, the new prisons were designed to isolate prisoners from each other and prevent the prisoners, who had been held in dormitory type accommodation, from organising education among themselves.

``It is all very similar to the situation in Long Kesh in the `70s,'' said the former H Block prisoner. ``Political prisoners were held in the Cages and could organise their own lives. They carried out their own education and other activities but then when the British government embarked on its policy of criminalisation and Ulsterisation, they opened the H Blocks and attempted to describe the Blocks as more humane prisons with better conditions.''

McCrory, whose trip to Turkey was financed by the Ballymurphy Ex-Prisoners Group, said he went on behalf of the Ballymurphy ex-POWs to find out the situation and gather as much information about the hunger strikes as possible.

``We now intend to organise campaign work demanding that the Turkish government negotiate a solution,'' he vowed.

An Phoblacht
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Ireland