Protesters flash the V-sign for “victory†during a
rally in the Kurdish-majority city of Diyarbakir,
south-eastern Turkey, on January 19 , 2019, in
support of a jailed lawmaker who has been on
hunger strike for more than two months. Leyla
Guven, a pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party
(HDP) lawmaker, launched a hunger strike on
November 8 in the Diyarbakir prison where she is
being held to pressure the Turkish government
into allowing lawyers and family members to visit
jailed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) leader,
Abdullah Ocalan. Ilyas AKENGIN / AFP
Thousands demonstrated Saturday in Turkey’s
Kurdish-majority southeast to support a detained
lawmaker from a pro-Kurdish party who launched
a hunger strike in November.
Waving flags of the pro-Kurdish People’s
Democratic Party (HDP), they danced and flashed
victory signs in Diyabakir, the main city in the
region, to express solidarity with Leyla Guven.
The HDP describes Guven’s condition as “life
threatening.â€
The 55-year-old began a hunger strike on
November 8 in protest at the prison conditions for
Kurdish leader Abdullah Ocalan.
“It is our duty to add our voices to that of
Leyla’s,†HDP’s co-president Pervin Buldan told
the gathering.
Ocalan is one of the founders of the outlawed
Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) which has waged
a bloody insurgency against the Turkish state
since 1984, and which is blacklisted as a terror
group by Ankara and its Western allies.
He has been serving a life sentence for treason in
an island prison near Istanbul since his capture in
1999.
Guven’s action is aimed at pressuring the
government into allowing lawyers and family
members to visit Ocalan, whose brother was
finally allowed to meet him in jail a week ago.
She was arrested for her opposition to Turkey’s
military operation against a Syrian Kurdish militia
that Ankara considers an offshoot of the PKK and
has been in jail since January last year.
Source:
guardian.ng/news/world/thousands-rally-
in-turkey-to-back-detained-kurdish-mp-on-
hunger-strike/
