Turkey announced yesterday that it will not build more controversial F-type prisons once the current programme is completed. The prisons have triggered a wave of hunger strikes in which 29 protesters have died.
"From now on, not a single Ftype prison will be built anywhere in Turkey," the Justice Minister, Mr Hikmet Sami Turk, said quoted by Anatonia news agency.
Meanwhile, Istanbul police detained 42 people protesting against the new prisons outside the justice ministry.
According to the Turkish Human Rights Association (IHD), Turkey had planned to build 11 F-type prisons, with four already in operation and one ready to be opened. The other six are expected to be completed in several months.
The hunger-strike protest movement was launched last October by hundreds of left-wing inmates who oppose the new jails where cells holding a maximum of three people replace large dormitories for up to 60. The prisoners and human rights activists claimed confinement in smaller units alienated inmates from fellow prisoners and left them more vulnerable to ill-treatment and torture by prison officials.
On Saturday, the hunger strike claimed its 29th life with the death of a 47-year-old inmate who had been paroled in June due to failing health. The dead woman, Sevgi Erdogan, was one of some 20 inmates conditionally released from prison in June who continued their hunger strike in a house on the outskirts of Istanbul.
According to Turkey's Human Rights Foundation, another 180 inmates are still on hunger strike and about 50 have been released from jail over the past few weeks because of their state of health.