Hunger Striking MPs Expect 'Isolation Declaration' From Government

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Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) MPs Leyla Güven, Dersim Dağ, Murat Sarısaç and Tayip Temel have said that the government should "declare the isolation lifted" to end their hunger strikes.

Releasing a written statement, the MPs said there was no guarantee that the isolation on PKK's [Kurdistan Workers' Party] imprisoned leader Abdullah Öcalan will be lifted after his meeting with his lawyers.

CLICK - Öcalan Met Lawyers For The First Time Since 2011

MP Güven is on the 181st day of hunger strike, which she began demanding the isolation on Öcalan be lifted. Dağ begin a hunger strike on March 3, Temel and Sarısaç began on March 8. More than a thousand prisoners are also on a hunger strike with the same demand.

"There is a need for a deep social reconciliation"

The four MPs briefly said the following in the statement:

"We are having a bittersweet joy. Because bodies have been melting for months for this meeting to be done. Eight young people put their lives forward for this meeting to be done. Our mothers are being dragged across the ground every day for this meeting to be done. There is no meal cooked in thousands of homes for this meeting to be done. For a state to implement its own laws, for the laws to be implemented equally for everyone!

"As Öcalan underpinned in his last message, 'In the historical process that we are currently going through, there is a need for a deep social reconciliation. We can solve the problems of Turkey, even those of the region, and primarily the problem of war, not with physical tools of violence, but by using soft power, that is, by using reason as well as political and cultural power.'

"We struggle for important messages like this to be able to reach the public. And it is clear that in an environment where the isolation is lifted, Öcalan will have much more important contributions to democratization and peace in across the country and the region.

"We are concerned that this meeting happening without a smallest guarantee for these practices not to continue is done by the government to make itself at ease for a while. This why our resistance is continuing with determination.

"Right now, the most important expectation from the government is to declare the society that the isolation has been totally lifted. Such a declaration, along with making an important contribution to the democracy of Turkey, would also be a historical step that would end the hunger strike." (AS/VK)