Imrali prison

Dear Foreign Secretary,

We write to express our deep concern over the UK government’s position in its relations with Turkey as the human rights situation inside the country continues to deteriorate rapidly. In particular, we seek to urgently draw your attention to the 7,000 Kurdish political prisoners on hunger strike in Turkish prisons and the solidarity hunger strikes now spreading across Europe, including in the UK. Seven Kurdish political prisoners in Turkey have taken their own lives in the last three weeks.

The hunger strikers are demanding urgent action to end the persecution of the Kurdish people in Turkey as embodied in the person of Abdullah Ocalan who has been kept in a state of aggravated solitary confinement for approaching 20 years: an inhuman punishment in breach of both domestic laws and international conventions to which Turkey is a signatory.

There has been a lack of tangible and effective action by the Council of Europe and the Committee for the Prevention of Torture (CPT) with respect to Turkey’s continued denial of Ocalan’s basic human right to be visited by his family members and his lawyers. This is despite the fact that in January 2019, the Council of Europe passed a resolution clearly expressing concern regarding the human rights situation in the country and the condition of the hunger strikers, as well as calling on the Turkish Government to authorize immediate publication of the CPT’s findings on Ocalan.

However, this resolution has been insufficient in pressuring Turkey to take any action to mitigate the severity of the isolation conditions, and the situation is now absolutely critical.

As you must know, Abdullah Ocalan was abducted from Nairobi, Kenya, on 15 February 1999 in an international clandestine operation involving the intelligence agencies of Turkey and the US, and has been kept in conditions of harsh solitary confinement virtually ever since; he has been forbidden contacts with a lawyer since 2011, and has only been granted two visits since April 2015.

To protest these unlawful conditions, the then-imprisoned MP of the People’s Democratic Party (HDP), Ms Leyla Güven, started an indefinite hunger strike on 7 November 2018. Since then, more than 7,000 political prisoners across Turkey, and numerous members of the international community in Europe, the UK, North America, and the Middle East, have joined Ms Güven in declaring themselves to be on indefinite hunger strike, with the sole demand of ending the isolation imposed on Ocalan. Many hunger strikers are now reaching a serious point and are suffering serious health problems, but they are refusing medical treatment until Ocalan’s isolation is lifted.