ERBIL, Kurdistan Region—At least 230 critically ill Kurdish inmates suffer in Turkish prisons without the required medical care, and one died in May after being refused permission to spend his final weeks with his family, prisoners and human rights groups in Turkey say.
Activists in Turkey, where the Kurds have remained severely repressed and until two decades ago faced arrest for even speaking their ethnic language, have been calling for the release of these inmates since the beginning of peace talks between Ankara and the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) this year.
In a letter to Rudaw earlier this month, a Kurdish inmate at an Ankara prison said he even had written acknowledgement from authorities, admitting these inmates needed special care.
Mehemetcan Oguzsoy, a PKK fighter who was wounded and captured by the Turkish army before being sentenced and imprisoned, said in the letter that he had seen the slow death of an inmate – Irfan Eskiberg -- who died in May after being refused permission to die beside his family.
"I was injured many times and witnessed the death of many of my friends, but seeing people die in prison is a different kind of brutality,” he wrote.
Oguzsoy said he was allowed by prison guard to see Eskibeg in his cell just three months before he died.
“It was a very unpleasant situation. It is a very sad feeling when you know a friend of yours is going to die in three months,” he said.
Oguzsoy added that he and other inmates had pleaded with the Turkish justice and health ministries, as well as the president, to allow Eskibeg to spend the final days of his life with his family, but their requests were declined.
According to Oguzsoy, while the justice ministry had declined their petition for Eskiberg and other critically ill inmates, it had acknowledged in writing that these prisoners suffered serious health problems. The ministry mentioned them by name, acknowledging that one needed “constant medical attention,” and others were under medical care in prison.
Leaders of the pro-Kurdish Peace and Democracy Party (BDP) say that thousands of Kurds, most of them human rights activists and journalists, have been arrested by the Turkish police since 2009 for supposed PKK membership.
