Deputies from the Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) who have been on a hunger strike protesting the inability of Kurdish terrorist leader Abdullah Öcalan to speak with his lawyers for years have said they expect an official declaration from the ruling party ending his “isolation,” the Artı Gerçek news website reported.
Leyla Güven, Dersim Dağ, Tayip Temel and Murat Sarısaç issued a written statement after Öcalan was visited on Monday by his lawyers for the first time since 2011, stating that it might be a move from the government to ease the tension, not necessarily meaning the end of his “isolation.”
Güven went on a hunger strike in November 2018 in protest of the “isolation” of jailed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) leader Öcalan.
She was later joined by several other HDP deputies and Kurdish rights activists.
According to a human rights group, nearly 3,000 inmates in Turkish prisons also joined the hunger strike.
Öcalan has sent a message via his lawyers to the people on hunger strike, stressing that it must not cost them their lives and that their health was above everything else.