Kurdish prisoner commits suicide in Turkey

ANKARA: A fourth Kurdish prisoner in Turkey committed suicide Monday to protest against the conditions of jailed militant Kurdish leader Abdullah Ocalan, a pro-Kurdish party official and an MP said.

The death of Medya Cinar follows the suicide of three others in prison, the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) official who did not wish to be named told AFP. A HDP lawmaker, Tuma Celik, also said Cinar had killed herself in a prison in the southeast Mardin province. But the Mardin public prosecutor’s office denied reports of Cinar committing suicide as an act of protest, saying such claims were “biased” and “misleading”.

Cinar had been charged with “destroying the state’s unity and country’s integrity”, the prosecutor’s office said in a statement, after she was detained in 2016. The office said Cinar “tried to hang herself” and after she was taken to a hospital, she was pronounced dead. Authorities have launched a probe, it said.