Kurdish prisoner Mehmet Sait Yıldırım, 75, was hospitalized due to a heart attack on Monday after a Turkish prison administration postponed his conditional release for a third time, Turkish media reported.
The Administration and Observation Board at İzmir Kırıklar Prison delayed Yıldırım’s conditional release for another three months. His lawyer, Ali İhsan Güven, said the board meeting was tense and that officials pressured his client to express remorse, as they had during previous reviews. Yıldırım suffered a heart attack after returning to his cell and was taken to a hospital, where doctors inserted two stents.
Yıldırım’s family on Wednesday called for his immediate release and said they would begin a hunger strike outside the İzmir courthouse if authorities continued to keep him in prison.
Yıldırım was sentenced to life in prison in 1995 on charges related to membership in the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). He became eligible for conditional release in February 2025, but prison authorities twice postponed it, citing a lack of good conduct and his failure to express remorse.
The PKK, designated as a terrorist organization by Turkey and its Western allies, has waged an insurgency against the Turkish state since 1984 but announced in May 2025 that it would disband and end its armed campaign.
Under Turkish law, prisoners serving life sentences for offenses committed as part of the activities of a criminal organization my become eligible for conditional release after serving 30 years.
Yıldırım has a number of serious health problems, including cardiovascular disease and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). Medical evaluations in 2015 and 2016 found that he was not fit to remain in prison without assistance.
Ahead of the latest review, Peoples’ Equality and Democracy Party (DEM Party) spokesperson and lawmaker Ayşegül Doğan submitted a parliamentary question to Justice Minister Akın Gürlek on July 28 and separately asked parliament’s Human Rights Inquiry Committee to examine Yıldırım’s health and continued imprisonment in light of his right to life and right to access health services. According to medical reports cited in Doğan’s applications, Yıldırım’s health had deteriorated as his imprisonment continued beyond his conditional release date.
Yıldırım was among five prisoners transferred to İmralı Prison in 2015 at the request of jailed PKK leader Abdullah Öcalan during a peace process between the Turkish government and the PKK. He was transferred out of İmralı nine days later due to health problems. He has been held at İzmir Kırıklar High-Security Prison since September 2018, where he has been kept in solitary confinement.
Administration and Observation Boards, established in Turkish prisons in January 2021, have faced criticism from opposition parties and human rights groups for arbitrarily rejecting or delaying the conditional release or probation of political prisoners, particularly those imprisoned over Gülen links or pro-Kurdish political engagement, on grounds such as “failure to display remorse.”
They have described the repeated rejections as politically motivated and a violation of prisoners’ rights, saying the boards exceed their authority and act like courts.
