TURKEY: ISTANBUL. Hunger strike. 2001
Fatma SENER on the 254th day of her hunger strike. Fatma later was the first one ever to escape from the house and quit the strike.

The Turkish hunger strike is the longest and now the deadliest hunger strike against a government in modern history. The striker's main demands are abandonment by the government of the new Turkish prisons, in which the inmates are kept in one to three man cells. The strikers feel these modern prisons are just another way for the government to isolate and torture the prisoners. In addition to abandoning the new prison plans, the strikers want an international monitoring committee to be sure the government is complying. There are three different houses full of hunger strikers, all in various stages of death. With the addition of over 180 new recruits the death toll will be in the hundreds, and there is no sign of the strikers abandoning their protest even though the government has stated that the demands will not be met.