Political prisoners of PAJK (Kurdistan Women's Liberation Party) and PKK (Kurdistan Workers' Party) in Turkey’s prisons started a hunger strike today.

The hunger strike demands “the isolation imposed upon Kurdish People’s Leader Abdullah Öcalan and the prisoners with him be lifted at once, conditions to freely negotiate be implemented, rights violations practices in prisons are abandoned and practices of burning down villages end” and will continue in 5-day shifts until April 15.

A previous related statement by Deniz Kaya on behalf of PKK and PAJK prisoners had stated the following;

"The AKP is trying to intimidate the opposition through its emergency decrees, arrests, detentions, and normalization of torture. Parliamentarians, mayors, academics and journalists are arrested, villages are burnt, houses are destroyed, people are displaced and massacred. The first place where the state of emergency coup regime was implemented was the İmralı High Security Prison. An unprecedented system of isolation and torture is taking place there. The isolation of Kurdish People's Leader Abdullah Öcalan is being expanded over to all prisons. Our Leader and the comrades that are in the same jail with him are unable to meet with their families or lawyer, and are even prohibited from writing a letter.

The people put in prison have no life guarantees. Every day, our friends that are exiled from one prison to another are searched naked and tortured. Our belongings are seized during the raids on our cells and the letters we write in Kurdish are not sent as they are labelled 'unknown language.' Cameras are placed in our cells in a way that violates our living spaces, and we are forced to stand on attention during the roll-calls and wear name badges just like during the September 12 coup. The fascist AKP-MHP bloc seeks to consolidate their dictatorship by making Erdoğan president through a referendum. As the PKK and PAJK prisoners, we state that we will continue to reject this fascist and racist system and put up resistance. We call upon all social groups to say 'NO' during the referendum enforced by the AKP-MHP alliance and to enhance the resistance at all fronts."

Kaya noted that their protests would increase if their demands were not met.

Meanwhile, the indefinite-irreversible hunger strike by 28 prisoners in İzmir Aliağa Şakran Prison is on its 29th day, the indefinite-irreversible hunger strike by 6 detainees in Edirne Type F Closed Prison is on its 20th day, and the indefinite-irreversible hunger strike by 10 detainees in Van Type T Prison is on its 8th day.