DIYARBAKIR, Turkey: Thousands demonstrated Saturday in Turkey's Kurdish-majority southeast to support a detained lawmaker from a pro-Kurdish party who launched a hunger strike in November. Waving flags of the pro-Kurdish People's Democratic Party (HDP), they danced and flashed victory signs in Diyabakir, the main city in the region, to express solidarity with Leyla Guven. The HDP describes Guven's condition as "life threatening."
The 55-year-old began a hunger strike on November 8 in protest at the prison conditions for Kurdish leader Abdullah Ocalan. "It is our duty to add our voices to that of Leyla's," HDP's co-president Pervin Buldan told the gathering.
Ocalan is one of the founders of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) which has waged a bloody insurgency against the Turkish state since 1984, and which is blacklisted as a terror group by Ankara and its Western allies.
He has been serving a life sentence for treason in an island prison near Istanbul since his capture in 1999. Guven's action is aimed at pressuring the government into allowing lawyers and family members to visit Ocalan, whose brother was finally allowed to meet him in jail a week ago.
Late Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi seen in this undated photo.— AFP/FileTEHRAN: After Iran mourned president...
Marooned houses are seen during heavy rainfall in Patuakhali on May 27, 2024, following the landfall of Cyclone Remal...
Former US President Donald Trump returns after a break in his criminal trial for allegedly covering up hush money...
Waves crash against the seawall as Hurricane Irma slammed across islands in the northern Caribbean in Fajardo, Puerto...
A protest in Georgia seen in this undated image.— AFP/file TBILISI: Georgia´s parliament voted on Tuesday to adopt...
French President Emmanuel Macron, left, and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz arrive with fellow ministers for a family...