Turkish media said several hundred hunger strikers in the city of Izmir on the Aegean coast had ended their protest as Ocalan called them to stop.


“Today I went to see my brother Abdullah Ocalan face-to-face in Imrali prison,” Ocalan’s brother Mehmet said in a statement. “He wants me to share immediately with the public his call about the hunger strikes …. This action has achieved its goal. Without any hesitation, they should end the hunger strike.

Strikers in some other areas were considering Ocalan’s call and were expected to make a statement on Sunday, Kurdish politicians said.

The pro-Kurdish Peace and Democracy Party (BDP), several of whose members joined the hunger strike, said its deputies in the city of Diyarbakir – the regional center of the heavily Kurdish southeast – would communicate Ocalan’s call to prisoners there.

“We hope this call will pave the way for the next process, which is to end (Ocalan’s) isolation … The Kurdish problem should be resolved by dialogue and deliberation,” BDP leader Selahattin Demirtas told reporters.

The hunger strike by at least 1,700 people to demand an end to Ocalan’s isolation is in its 67th day and doctors have said prisoners could soon die.

Ocalan, leader of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which has fought for Kurdish autonomy for almost three decades, has been imprisoned on the small island of Imrali in the Marmara Sea since his capture in 1999.

Ocalan’s solitary confinement was eased in 2009 when five more inmates were brought to the island. His current situation is unclear but lawyers say he has no access to a telephone or television and his newspapers are censored.

The lawyers say the authorities have declined their requests to visit Ocalan 134 times since they last saw him more on July 27, 2011, usually blaming bad weather or breakdowns on the boat that would ferry them to Imrali.