A hunger strike over Turkish prison reforms claimed a 12th victim yesterday this time among the inmates' relatives, the Turkish Human Rights Association (IHD) said.
Canan Kulaksiz, a 19-year-old university student whose uncle was in jail, died in Istanbul on the 137th day of her hunger strike in support of the prison protest, a spokesman for the IHD's Istanbul office said.
She died in a house where she was hunger-striking with other prisoners' relatives, the spokesman said.
Since March 21st, 10 inmates and two relatives of the striking prisoners have starved themselves to death.
The prisoners' protest began last October to protest at Turkey's plans to introduce new prisons with smaller cells for up to three inmates, replacing existing jails with large dormitories housing up to 60 people.
The inmates, backed by human rights activists, maintain that they will be more vulnerable to mistreatment and torture when isolated in smaller units.
But the government has categorically refused to go back on the new jails, arguing that the packed dormitories are the main reason behind the frequent riots and hostage-taking incidents in Turkey's unruly jails.
In December, Turkish paramilitary troops carried out nationwide raids on scores of jails across the country to break the hunger strike. The four-day crackdown left 30 prisoners dead, many of them by self-immolation. Two soldiers also died.
More than 1,000 inmates, meanwhile, have been placed in three of the new prisons, despite government pledges that they would not become operational until a social consensus had been reached on their introduction.
Between 300 and 400 inmates are on a hunger strike with some 120 of them hospitalised and a dozen reported in critical condition.
Since the strike began, some participants have interrupted the protest at certain times and then restarted it, while others joined several weeks after the action began.
The Turkish Justice Minister, Mr Hikmet Sami Turk, called on inmates on Thursday to "end the hunger strike and accept medical help" as he expressed sorrow for the deaths.
On Friday, the human rights group urged the Council of Europe to put pressure on Ankara to find a solution to the hunger strike after the protest claimed its 10th victim in less than a month.
Turkey has expelled 70 illegal migrants from Iraq and Syria who were trying to cross into neighbouring Greece and Bulgaria, the state-run Anatolian news agency said.
