Hunger Strike-Reaction in Europe

[Jonupstny@xxxxxxx]

      By Fiona Fleck

    BONN, July 25 (Reuter) - European media and opposition parties rallied
support on Thursday for some 150 Turkish prisoners on hunger strike to
protest at political detentions, but governments were muted in their
response.

    In Germany, the country most affected outside Turkey because of its two
million-strong Turkish community, critics poured scorn on Ankara for what
they said were political detentions and human rights abuses in Turkish
prisons.

    ``Now there has to be a concession to the hunger strikers' justifed
demand for dignified treatment in prison,'' said a commentator on German
television (ARD), dismissing the Bonn government's call on Wednesday to the
hunger strikers to give up their protest.

    Socialist members of the European Parliament said the EU should threaten
to block funds for Turkey in budget talks later this year. Their leader
Pauline Green said she had written to Turkish Prime Minister Necmettin
Erbakan voicing concern over the deaths of six strikers.

    ``The Turkish government have used the institutions of the European Union
to gain what they want and have given nothing of what they promised in
return,'' Green said.

    Last year, the European parliament allowed an EU customs union with
Turkey to go through after adding amendments meant to assure that human
rights were respected.

    London did not comment on the protest, but British police said 20
demonstrators had briefly occupied a Turkish Airlines office in protest
against conditions in Turkish jails.

    French officials called on Ankara to find a solution to the strike that
respected human rights but did not elaborate.

    After a third night of firebombings of Turkish shops in Germany, German
media condemned the attacks which prosecutors say could be the work of
Turkish left-wingers showing solidarity with the protest back home.

    ``These attacks on Turkish shops in Germany are senseless and
counter-productive. They arouse anger and misunderstanding here and could
lead to a further escalation of violence in Turkey,'' the ARD television
commentator said.

    In Strasbourg, Leni Fischer, the President of the European Council
Parliamentary Assembly, called on Turkey to ``respect the European Convention
on Human Rights, the rules of the Council of Europe concerning prisons and to
take into account the demands made by the prisoners..''

    Fischer, who is German, said consultations were underway to send a
delegation of parliamentarians to Turkey to discuss the issue with
authorities there.

    In Turkey's traditional foe Greece, officials slammed Turkey's human
rights record over the strikers' deaths and appealed to the European Union to
intervene.

    German commentators and opposition politicians urged Bonn and other
Western governments not to turn a blind eye to ``abuses'' by a NATO ally that
is lobbying hard to join the European Union.

    ``If several hundred prisoners in a NATO country risk their lives to
protest against the methods of the legal system there, their Western partners
cannot simply look away,'' the respected Frankfurter Allgemeine newspaper
commented.

    Germany's opposition Social Democrats (SPD) expressed solidarity with the
hunger strikers a day after Turkish protesters occupied the party's Frankfurt
headquarters for five hours before being ousted by police.

    ``The prisoners' central demand is something that must be adhered to by
all civilised people and states, prisons must be run without human rights
violations,'' Rudolf Bindig, the SPD human rights spokesman in the German
parliament said.

13:11 07-25-96


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