A Kurdish lawyer dies in an Istanbul prison after seven-month hunger strike

The Kurdish lawyer from North Kurdistan (Kurdistan of Turkey), Ebru Timtec, lost her life on Thursday, 27 August, in a hospital in Istanbul, Turkey. She was transferred to the hospital from her prison cell after her health condition deteriorated completely due to her open hunger strike, which she had started on the fifth of February. A human rights organization announced the death of Timtik at nine o'clock at night according to the local time in the Turkish capital, Ankara, after 238 days of the hunger strike. The late lawyer was not alone, her colleague, Aitag Unsal, a Turkish lawyer of Arab descent, who was arrested with her in September of 2017, joined her strike about a month later. The institution known as the People's Bar Association expressed its grief in a written statement and said, “The people's lawyer will remain immortal in our hearts forever.” Timtik was calling with her colleague Onsal for a fair trial, after a Turkish court issued a decision to imprison her for a term of 13 years, and her colleague for 10 years and 6 months. As a result, both of them announced a few months ago that they would go on an open hunger strike. At the end of last July the security authorities returned the Kurdish lawyer and her colleague to prison after they underwent a health check in the Forensic Medicine Directorate in Istanbul, despite demonstrations involving dozens of lawyers who demanded the release of both lawyers. Timtil was a member of the Turkish Bar Association, Istanbul Branch, while her colleague registered with the associations branch in the capital, Ankara. The government accused her earlier of membership in the Communist Revolutionary Party, an armed party that has been active in Turkey since 1970, which is a banned party in the country and is classified as a terrorist organization in Ankara, and as a result, both of them and 5 other suspects were arrested 3 years ago. According to the People's Bar Association, Unsal's health has also deteriorated inside the prison and Ankara refuses to release him, just as it refused to release the Kurdish lawyer earlier, which led to her death.