Workers World Dec. 28, 2000: Turkish police launch deadly assault on fasting prisoners

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------------------------- Via Workers World News Service Reprinted from the Dec. 28, 2000 issue of Workers World newspaper -------------------------

Turkish police launch deadly assault on fasting prisoners

By John Catalinotto

At 4 a.m. on Dec. 19 the Turkish government sent police and army riot squads armed to the teeth into 20 prisons where over 1,100 political prisoners were conducting a hunger strike. Almost 300 prisoners were on a death fast. As of 7 p.m., the assault had left 20 people dead, including 18 prisoners and two police, according to BBC News.
The prisoners were protesting plans to separate inmates into individual cells--the so-called Type-F prisons. They demanded to remain in dormitory prisons where they could continue to have contact with each other.
While the regime presented the assault as an attempt to stop the hunger strikers from dying, other reports say troops opened fire on some of the prisoners and beat many more. Police were armed with explosives and heavy weapons, according to reports from Turkish revolutionary groups.
In some prisons the fasting prisoners set themselves on fire. In all places they fought back against the vicious attack from the Turkish state.
According to Turkish Justice Minister Hikmet Sami Turk, two prisoners in Istanbul's Bayrampasa prison died after setting themselves on fire. A third inmate was shot and killed by soldiers in Istanbul's Umraniye prison after setting himself on fire and rushing toward soldiers, he said. Prisoner or prisoner-support sources have not yet verified Turk's statements as to how the prisoners died.
Type-F means torture, isolation
The revolutionary and anti-imperialist prisoners have been on a hunger strike since Oct. 20 to stop their transfer to Type-F prisons. The new prisons are modeled on U.S. maximum-security, behavior-modification prisons. These impose high-tech total isolation in order to break down prisoners' morale and control them politically.
This total isolation of all prisoners combines physical and psychological torture.
Members of three leftist groups in Turkey started this hunger strike. Imprisoned members of the Revolutionary People's Liberation Party-Front (DHKP-C), the Communist Party of Turkey-Marxist-Leninist (TKP-ML) and the Communist Workers Party of Turkey (TKIP) have called for the death fast.
These groups were followed by other organizations with political prisoners, including the Kurdish Workers Party (PKK). And the action has spread outside the prisons.
About 12,000 of the almost 72,000 prisoners in Turkey are political prisoners. These include members of different communist organizations, Kurds, writers, journalists and members of Muslim groups.
The Turkish state imposes truly horrible conditions on the leftist and Kurdish political prisoners, turning prisons into centers of torture. Prison guards and soldiers frequently murder prisoners. Last year prison guards and soldiers attacked political prisoners in Ulucanlar prison, killing 10 of them.
According to a Reuters report from Istanbul, an official of the Human Rights Association, which closely monitors prisons, said she knew of at least five deaths from self-immolation or gunshot wounds during raids on several jails. "The so-called life-saving operation by the Justice Ministry is causing deaths," she said.
Relatives of leftist prisoners gathered outside Bayrampasa and denounced the raids and the transfer plan, as well as an amnesty law that would mostly release non-political prisoners. "The goal is clear: they want to kill my children," one woman said.
Turkish immigrants in Western Europe have already demonstrated support for the prisoners. An Italian organization has called a demonstration before the Turkish embassy in Rome. Prisoner-support groups have called upon the European left to demonstrate solidarity with the prisoners.
Turkey, a NATO member, is a client state of the Western imperialist powers and has especially close ties to the United States and Germany. Both Western powers supply weapons and training to the Turkish army even as it crushes the movement in Kurdistan. The Pentagon used Turkish air bases to launch air attacks on Iraq and Yugoslavia.
For these reasons, the Turkish left also holds West European and U.S. imperialism responsible for the crimes of the Turkish state.

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