A Kurdish prisoner in Turkey’s southeastern Mardin province was found dead in her cell early Monday in what her lawyer said was a suicide to protest Turkey’s treatment of the jailed leader of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), Ahval reported on Monday.
According to Ahval, 24-year-old Medya Çınar was arrested in May 2016 in Mardin’s Nusaybin district and charged with links to the PKK.
Çınar is believed to be the fourth Kurdish prisoner to have committed suicide to protest Öcalan’s treatment since more than 160 Kurdish prisoners and deputies began a hunger strike last November.
Those who are currently on hunger strike seek an improvement in Öcalan’s jail conditions, protesting Öcalan’s inability to speak with his lawyers, referring to it as his “isolation.”
Zehra Sağlam, who had been behind bars for three years, killed herself in Turkey’s eastern province of Erzurum on Sunday.
Zülküf Gezen, who had been sentenced to 104 years in prison in 2007 on charges of killing one police officer and injuring five others in a bomb attack in Diyarbakır, took his own life on March 18.
Ayten Beçet died by suicide on March 23 in a women’s prison in Kocaeli’s Gebze district.
