Turkey's parliament speaker urges lawyer who refuses to eat to end protest

ANKARA, Turkey: Turkey's parliament speaker on Tuesday called on a lawyer who has refused food for 265 days in protest of high security prisons to immediately end his protest, promising a review of prison conditions in the new year.
Parliament speaker Bulent Arinc met with family members of Behic Asci, who has been refusing solid foods — but not liquids — since April, 5 to protest conditions in the maximum security prisons, where inmates are kept in one- or three-person cells. Human rights groups say prisoners are sometimes kept in solitary confinement and the cells provide very little opportunity for interaction between prisoners, leaving them isolated and vulnerable.
"Behic Asci must end this struggle which he calls a 'death fast,' that has been continuing for 265 days," Arinc said. "We want this death fast to end so that he may regain his health."
"If this is done, I want to say that in the first week of January, a delegation will work on the issue," Arinc promised.
Asci's mother Fazilet Erdogan however, doubted Arinc's pledge would convince her son.
"My son is as obstinate as I am," Erdogan said. "I don't think he will end the death fast until the isolation (of prisoners) is lifted."
Scores of prisoners or their supporters have died in hunger strikes protesting conditions at high security prisons since October 2000 — when authorities began moving prisoners from large wards housing up to 100 people to one- or three-inmate cells. Authorities said the large wards were unruly and had become recruiting centers for terrorist groups.
The protesters drink tea, sugared and salted water and take minerals to help prolong the strike.
The protest is being led by the Revolutionary People's Liberation Party-Front, or DHKP-C, a banned Marxist group which has claimed responsibility for a number of assassinations and bombings since the 1970s.