What if a death fast demands Apo's execution too?

If hunger strikes have become the only means of speech left in a person's hands, they may command a measure of respect. When there is no other language, no other channel left through which to speak and convey one's message, it becomes possible to seek a path through one's own body, to try to form a voice, a message, out of one's own death. Even in many suicides the ultimate aim is not to die but to turn one's body into a message, to live on more through dying in this way, or sometimes to be more effective still by punishing others with this death. Turning one's own body into a weapon for worldly ends is, from whatever angle one looks at it, an expression of complex psychological problems. To lie down to die in order to achieve a goal in this world may be either a bluff too absurd to believe, or the result of a serious miscalculation, in which case reason must have been lost altogether.

Psychiatrists calculate that even among successful suicides, ninety percent are a game, resting on a naive assumption that death is not at stake. But this of course does not mean that suicide attempts or symptoms should not be taken seriously; on the contrary, it means that more accurate measures must be sought and found.

Looking at the hunger strikes that continue in prisons today and at the demands of those carrying them out, it is clear that we are beyond a situation that psychiatry could get to the bottom of. What is demanded? Who is demanding it? In whose name is it demanded, and why is one dying for it? Those who go on hunger strike are not demanding anything for themselves. They want the isolation of Abdullah Öcalan to be lifted. Öcalan, for whom they are ready to give their lives merely so that the isolation is lifted, does not lift a finger for them to live. For the person they deem worth dying for, the lives of these people have no value at all.

The reminder that Murat Belge made yesterday to those who try to make a Gandhi out of Öcalan stands in plain view: Gandhi never called on others to go on hunger strike; when he saw the need, he did it himself, alone. Moreover, he used the hunger strike not only against his enemies but also against his own friends, to stop violent actions of theirs that he disliked.

The organization, which until now has made a virtue of getting what it wants by killing others, is now trying to apply pressure by putting forward the lives of its members in prisons as another means. Those who have no respect for the lives of others demand that their demands be met out of respect for the lives of the members they put forward. Unable to attack the body of their enemy, they take the body of their own member hostage. Perhaps they are trying to extract the maximum benefit from the body of their own member. Let us admit that it is a skill to produce some usefulness even from the state of bodies that worked as death machines, once they have been apprehended and rendered unable to work, unable to kill the enemy. But the hypocrisy, inconsistency, immorality and wretchedness that this skill gives away are more striking.

Those who show no respect for the lives and right to life of others carry out this action somehow trusting that care will be shown to their own lives. If they trust so much that this care will be shown to their own lives, what is the fight they are waging for?

The BDP people have turned around and are threatening, saying, "It would be bad if coffins came out of the prisons." Why would it be bad? Not, of course, because very young lives will have withered. If we saw any sign that they felt the slightest concern for that, we would bow in respect. Yet with this very stance they show once again that they have not the slightest respect for those lives either. They are trying to produce a trump card from deaths that they hope will occur as soon as possible.

Instead of saving from death the young people who lie down to die by telling them that it is not worth it so that no coffins come out of prisons, and that some of what is demanded has already been done, this attitude of eagerly awaiting their deaths goes on the record. Defense in the mother tongue is already being regulated at this moment, education in the mother tongue is already a subject of political debate, and even more than these can be discussed in the political arena at every level. In an environment where a meeting with Öcalan has also already been voiced beforehand by the prime minister himself, what message are the hunger strikes conveying, and to whom?

The only way the BDP people show to stop the deaths is for the demands of those on strike to be accepted, but alongside the reasonable demands that have been accepted, they place an impossible one. The BDP co-chair says, "Let them not go to Abdullah Öcalan; let Öcalan come to us." This is in fact a clear sign that he himself has condemned these young people to death. He knows this will not happen. He demands something that will not happen, and as a consequence of what will not happen, he wants the imprisoned young PKK members to die. Whether he wants it himself, or whether this wish is ordered from him, is of no importance at all. From whichever angle you look, it is merciless, from whichever angle, cruel, from whichever angle, inconsistent, from whichever angle, whiny...

Where in the world is a hunger strike staged for the release of someone convicted of murder? Where in the world would a hunger strike staged for such a foolish purpose meet with so much understanding?

Taraf newspaper, instead of publishing something on this matter that would prevent the deaths of the young people heading toward death, is busy bringing the political rationality of their deaths to the fore.

But let us conclude by recalling that no one is facing a question that arises within the logic of these hunger strikes: If tomorrow another group tries to go on a hunger strike for Abdullah Öcalan to be executed, and someone else tries the same thing to demand that the BDP be shut down and its deputies be imprisoned, what will we do about it? How prepared are we to receive with understanding those who would lie down on hunger strike for such purposes?