Şerife Kalkan, mother of prisoner Rozerin Kalkan, spoke to Jin News regarding the hunger strikes in Turkish prisons and said, “We will back our children till the end.”Political prisoners of the Kurdistan Workers’s Party (PKK) and Kurdistan Free Life Party (PJAK) launched a massive hunger strike on 27 November 2020 that has now spread to more than 150 prisons in Turkey protesting against the isolation of the PKK leader Abdullah Öcalan and the increasing violations of rights in prisons in Turkey.
Rozerin Kalkan is one of the Kurdish women political prisoners in Şakran Women’s Closed Prison in Izmir, who has joined the hunger strike action and has been participating in the hunger strike in rotating groups.“My daughter was on a rotating hunger strike. She is not in a good condition of health. The prison is cold. They do not open the radiators. Prisoners demand is the lifting of the isolation. This isolation is imposed upon everyone, not just in prisons. There is isolation in every home. We don’t accept isolation, ” her mother Şerife Kalkan said.
Mother Kalkan also spoke about about the ongoing violations of human rights that her daughter and other prisoners have been facing. “The letters, magazines and books have not been given to the prisoners,” she said. “Our children did not commit a crime; so why do they try to impose the law of repentance. We do not regret it, we do not regret even if they were sentenced to 50 years. We stand behind our children until the end.”
