TURKEY: EIGHT TURKISH PRISON INMATES DIE IN FIGHTING BETWEEN LEFTIST PRISONERS AND JAIL STAFF

Record ID: 375804

  • Title: TURKEY: EIGHT TURKISH PRISON INMATES DIE IN FIGHTING BETWEEN LEFTIST PRISONERS AND JAIL STAFF
  • Date: 26th September 1999
  • Summary: ISTANBUL, TURKEY. (SEPTEMBER 26 1999) (REUTERS - ACCESS ALL) 1. LV/SLV OF THE UMRANIYE PRISON (3 SHOTS) 0.14 2. SLV APC/SECURITY FORCES GOING INTO THE PRISON (3 SHOTS) 0.29 3. SV RELATIVES OF PRISONERS WAITING OUTSIDE 0.39 4. SV OF POLICE FORCES IN FRONT OF THE PRISON (2 SHOTS) 0.49 5. SLV VAN LEAVING 0.56 6. SLV FORCES O
  • Embargoed: 11th October 1999 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: ISTANBUL AND ANKARA, TURKEY
  • Country: Turkey
  • Reuters ID: LVA71PA8UXW3YVAPPMLNC380ODZ1
  • Story Text: Eight Turkish prison inmates died on Sunday in
    fighting between leftist prisoners and jail staff.The
    violence spread to other jails where fellow leftists held
    wardens hostage or refused to cooperate with headcounts.

    Eight prisoners died in the Turkish capital on Sunday
    (September 26) in clashes between leftists and warders that
    Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit called an intolerable challenge
    to government control.

    The violence in Ankara spread to other prisons where
    leftists held wardens hostage or refused to cooperate with
    headcounts.

    Ecevit said the fighting had broken out when the inmates
    resisted attempts to search them prior to transfer to other
    prisons, and that between 20 and 25 security officials and
    prisoners had been injured.

    He said the protests were a challenge to government
    control of the prison population and would not be tolerated.

    Imprisoned members of leftist urban guerrilla groups have
    for years staged sporadic protests against prison conditions
    and transfers designed to split up perceived trouble-makers.

    Hostage taking and hunger strikes are the most common forms of
    action.

    Armed police and gendarmerie officers threw a cordon
    around the Ankara prison, from which ambulances emerged
    carrying the injured to local hospitals.

    Witnesses reported hearing gunfire from inside the jail
    early on Sunday -- when prison staff were conducting a search
    of a block housing the leftists.

    Other far-left inmates in two prisons in Istanbul and also
    in jails in Canakkale, Cankiri and Bartin took 44 warders
    hostage in apparent response to the clashes.Political
    prisoners in other jails were refusing to cooperate with
    warders.

    Prisoners in Turkey are usually held in large dormitories,
    and mobile phones and weapons often find their way into jail,
    making coordinated action by political prisoners quite common.

    Left-wingers in jails across Turkey took warders hostage
    for three days in July in support of hunger-strikers at
    another jail in Eskisehir.Those protests ended peacefully
    after demands for the hunger-strikers to be moved to another
    jail were met.

    Last week six prisoners died in an Istanbul jail in
    fighting between members of two rival organised crime gangs.

    Government plans to convert prison dormitories to smaller
    cells to limit communication between prisoners are proceeding
    very slowly and are opposed by the inmates.

    President Suleyman Demirel this month vetoed a planned
    amnesty that would have freed tens of thousands from jail,
    leaving close to 11,000 mostly political prisoners behind
    bars.

    Demirel said the law was unfair and asked parliament to
    discuss it again.The amnesty is high on the government's list
    of priorities when parliament reopens on October 1.


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