FRFI 163 October / November 2001
On 10 September Ugur Bulbul died in a suicide bombing in Istanbul, in protest against the F-type prison system. Two riot policemen were killed. On 15 September the state retaliated by attacking a house occupied by former prisoners and their supporters.
The Turkish government has deliberately chosen to switch from dormitory prisons to ‘European’ style cellular ones, in order to destroy the organisational capacity of political prisoners. Prisoners and their supporters have been hunger-striking in protest since October 2000, and 34 people have died as a result, in addition to 30 who were killed in December, when state forces bombed the prisons in an attempt to smash the protest.
It is now more important than ever that international protest is organised in support of the Turkish prisoners. Following Mark Barnsley’s article in the last FRFI, a small but growing group of English and Irish prisoners have begun regular solidarity action. Below, JOHN BOWDEN discusses the implications of the struggle in Turkey for prisoners worldwide. FRFI would like to hear from other prisoners about their experiences and their views.
Turkish political prisoners are continuing to die on hunger strike in protest against increased repression. Their situation reflects a wider struggle throughout the European and north American prison systems, as the state tries to eradicate resistance and impose absolute control.
In Britain, the transformation of regimes for long-term prisoners, especially, has been radical and relentless, and in less than seven years dispersal prisons have been reshaped into control units. ‘Incentives and earned privileges’ schemes and the heavy involvement of psychologists in intensive ‘course-work’ exert a degree of control over prisoners that is almost total. Regimes which previously recognised the need of long-term prisoners for a degree of psychological space and the right to complain collectively at times, have been transformed into clinical instruments of psychological and political control.
The Turkish state’s attempt to move political prisoners into cellular accommodation is essentially an attempt to individualise, depoliticise and disorganise them, and represents a pattern of control prevalent in prison systems throughout the world. More so than ever before, national governments are puppets of international capitalism, pursuing a common agenda: the eradication of political and social protest and dissent, both inside and outside prison.
Turkish political prisoners’ struggle against dehumanisation and depoliticisation should be a struggle shared by prisoners everywhere. Our collective strength is potentially such that we need only withdraw our co-operation from regimes in order to render them unworkable. Even the most passive expression of that strength – a refusal, for example, to recognise or co-operate with prison psychologists and their behaviour modification programmes – would throw prison administrations into a panic and force them to rethink their strategy.
We have the strength to change prisons irrevocably, if we recognise our common interest and basic unity, and it is critically important that we understand that unless some sort of a fightback is organised soon, our lives will be made intolerable and our minds destroyed.
We have to begin the struggle from the direct point of conflict, inside the wings and segregation units. And we need political support on the outside to highlight our struggle and prevent the system isolating and destroying our best activists.
It isn’t going to be easy organising an effective fightback in prison: a lot of ground has been seized by the system and it will resist with all its might any attempt to alter the balance of power. But it is important to recognise that the system’s power is maintained not just by the goon squad and the punishment unit – it is also dependent on our co-operation. We can make the final difference to how we’re treated, and in a society that seeks to engineer our destruction, it is critical that we realise that.
John Bowden, HMP Bristol
For information about the Turkish prison struggle contact the Committee to Defend Political Prisoners, [email protected] Voice/Fax 44(0) 845 283 7700 or TAYAD COMMITTEE LONDON, [email protected] Tel/Fax: 0044 207 249 9984 Mobile: 0044 7951 791802
