17 Die in Raids on Turkish Prisons

At least 17 people were killed Tuesday when Turkish security forces stormed prisons across the country in a bid to end a widespread hunger strike. Most of the dead were inmates who set themselves ablaze to protest the raids.

Justice Minister Hikmet Sami Turk said 15 of the dead were inmates who immolated themselves in the raids, which the government called “Operation Bring Back to Life.” Two soldiers died in clashes with inmates in prisons in Istanbul and the northwestern province of Canakkale.

Turk said 57 other inmates were injured when they tried to burn themselves.

Leftist prisoners have been participating in the hunger strike to protest government plans to transfer them from overcrowded wards to new maximum-security prisons, where they would be placed in small cells for one to three people. Nearly 300 inmates are on a death fast and have consumed only sugared water for two months. They are demanding that the government halt construction of the prisons, where they say they would be even more vulnerable to abuse by wardens.

Torture is common in Turkish prisons. In 1996, 10 Kurdish inmates accused of political crimes were battered to death by security guards in the largely Kurdish southeastern province of Diyarbakir for disobeying prison rules. Sixty security officials implicated in the killings have yet to be convicted.

Turkey’s dismal human rights record is frequently cited by European Union leaders as one of the main reasons the EU continues to reject the country’s bid for full membership.

“The Turkish government is pursuing its tradition of solving problems by killing people,” said Husnu Ondul, chairman of the independent Turkish Human Rights Assn. “I fear they [the Turkish authorities] are concealing the real number of deaths. A massacre has taken place today.”

The worst scenes of violence were in Istanbul, where paramilitary troops backed by attack helicopters and tanks sought to seize control of the Bayrampasa and Umraniye prisons, where the majority of striking inmates are being held. Prisoners reportedly fired on the security forces with assault rifles. Twelve hours after the raids were launched, most of the rebellious prisons were reported to be under government control.

Tuesday’s violence further weakened Turkey’s tottering coalition government, led by leftist Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit. Earlier this month, the government was faced with the country’s worst financial crisis in recent years after foreign investors withdrew nearly $10 billion in the wake of a criminal probe into 10 failed Turkish banks. A last-minute loan from the International Monetary Fund of $10 billion helped avert a collapse in the markets.

Scores of hunger strikers “rescued” from the prisons were reportedly being force-fed after refusing to accept medical intervention. “It is unthinkable for the state to stand by and watch people die,” Turk said.

The Turkish government insists that the smaller cells are necessary in order to break the hold of criminal gangs and political extremists over the overcrowded wards. Rampant corruption and lax security across Turkish prisons enable inmates to smuggle in weapons, drugs, cellular telephones and even women. Armed radical groups routinely organize weapons training and political indoctrination sessions in the wards, to which prison officials have no access.

“Building new jails will not solve the problem,” said Hashim Hashimi, an ethnic Kurdish lawmaker from the conservative Motherland Party, which shares power in Turkey’s ruling coalition government. “The state should first weed out the criminals within its own ranks.”