Diren Kirkog (19) has been in hospital for two months. She was released from the Evcincam prison in Istanbul for feeding and medical treatment and has begun to regain some of the over 100 lb she lost on hunger strike.
Imprisoned 21/2 years ago for attending a protest rally organised by the Turkish Communist Party (Markist Leninist), she began her hunger-strike in January - "to death if I have to" - in protest at prison conditions.
In particular she, and up to 1,200 other political prisoners, have been on hunger strike, in protest at the "F-type" isolation cells first introduced by the Turkish government in 1996.
So far, 42 people have died on this "death-fast" which began last October, and although the number on the fast has fallen to about 200, this is expected to begin climbing again in the autumn. Another wave of about 100 is expected to join the fast later this month.
Ms Kirkog was one of the 50 prisoners released in July because of the deteriorating state of their health. Although she has been receiving treatment for tuberculosis developed on the hunger-strike - which includes feeding - she intends resuming her fast when she is returned to prison in four months, if she is held in an F-cell.
The Turkish authorities have released up to 200 hunger-strikers since July, for a period of six months each in an effort to get them off the hunger-strikes, and Ms Kirkog has just over two years of her sentence to serve.
"My family has been with me through all of this," says the teenager. "I am lucky. When I started this of course I knew I would prefer not to die, but I was so against the F-prisons. I will not accept the way the government is treating us, trying to break us and treat us like animals."
The F-cells were introduced for the imprisonment of people accused and convicted of political or terrorist offences. They replaced the dormitory-style cells in which up to 60 prisoners were accommodated and which facilitated political organisation and association.
The F-cells have been condemned by Amnesty International on the grounds that "the imprisonment of people in solitary confinement or small group isolation may amount to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment". They have been the subject of two visits by the Council of Europe's Commission on the Prevention of Torture.
Her father is also in prison for membership of an illegal political party, while her mother spent a month in prison for attending the same rally. The family comes originally from the Umraniye region of Turkish Kurdistan, in south-east Turkey.
The long-term effects of the hunger-strike, according to Dr Onder Ozkalipchi, who specialises in the rehabilitation of prisoners and victims of torture at the Turkish Human Rights Foundation in Istanbul, can include brain damage, eye-paralysis and long-term problems with feeding.
"The severe weight loss can be treated with oral feeding over six to eight weeks. The main damage is this long-term effect." The Turkish Government has said it will not negotiate with the prisoners or their families, many of whom have been fasting in solidarity with the prisoners, because it says the hunger-strikes are being orchestrated by illegal left-wing groups whose ultimate aim is to undermine the integrity of the state.
While we spoke in her room in the Capcha Hospital, one of the largest in Istanbul, Ms Kirkog's mother, Semiha, arrived. Asked how it has been to watch her one of her three daughters - Diren also has a four-year-old brother, Umit - grow weaker and weaker in prison, she said it brings on "a contradiction of emotions'".
Cradling her still weak daughter into bed she said: "It is horrible to watch your child get so sick. People have said 'She is so young. How can a youngster go to the death?' But no-one really tries to understand what the F-cells mean. They mean oppression, brutality. I am her mother but I am also her comrade."
The prison authorities gave her an envelope containing a consent form she could sign to allow force feeding at any time. She says she never considered for a moment signing it. "That is part of their strategy, to get the families to break the spirit. But to sign would be to sell my daughter to the state. We are going to win this and we know we will have to give bodies. But our demands cannot be politicised. Our demands are human."