{"id":153395,"date":"2026-08-26T19:39:35","date_gmt":"2026-08-26T19:39:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/153395\/"},"modified":"2026-08-26T19:39:35","modified_gmt":"2026-08-26T19:39:35","slug":"seriously-ill-kurdish-prisoner-suffers-heart-attack-after-third-delay-of-conditional-release","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/153395\/","title":{"rendered":"Seriously ill Kurdish prisoner suffers heart attack after third delay of conditional release"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"\"\"<\/a>\u0130zmir K\u0131r\u0131klar Prison and Mehmet Sait Y\u0131ld\u0131r\u0131m<\/p>\n

Kurdish prisoner Mehmet Sait Y\u0131ld\u0131r\u0131m, 75, was hospitalized due to a heart attack on Monday after a Turkish prison administration postponed<\/a> his conditional release for a third time, Turkish media reported.<\/p>\n

The Administration and Observation Board at \u0130zmir K\u0131r\u0131klar Prison delayed Y\u0131ld\u0131r\u0131m\u2019s conditional release for another three months. His lawyer, Ali \u0130hsan G\u00fcven, said the board meeting was tense and that officials pressured his client to express remorse, as they had during previous reviews. Y\u0131ld\u0131r\u0131m suffered a heart attack after returning to his cell and was taken to a hospital, where doctors inserted two stents.<\/p>\n

Y\u0131ld\u0131r\u0131m\u2019s family on Wednesday called<\/a> for his immediate release and said they would begin a hunger strike outside the \u0130zmir courthouse if authorities continued to keep him in prison.<\/p>\n

Y\u0131ld\u0131r\u0131m was sentenced to life in prison in 1995 on charges related to membership in the outlawed Kurdistan Workers\u2019 Party (PKK). He became eligible for conditional release in February 2025, but prison authorities twice postponed it, citing a lack of good conduct and his failure to express remorse.<\/p>\n

The PKK, designated as a terrorist organization by Turkey and its Western allies, has waged an insurgency against the Turkish state since 1984 but announced in May 2025 that it would disband and end its armed campaign.<\/p>\n

Under Turkish law, prisoners serving life sentences for offenses committed as part of the activities of a criminal organization my become eligible for conditional release after serving 30 years.<\/p>\n

Y\u0131ld\u0131r\u0131m has a number of serious health problems, including cardiovascular disease and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). Medical evaluations in 2015 and 2016 found that he was not fit to remain in prison without assistance.<\/p>\n

Ahead of the latest review, Peoples\u2019 Equality and Democracy Party (DEM Party) spokesperson and lawmaker Ay\u015feg\u00fcl Do\u011fan submitted a parliamentary question to Justice Minister Ak\u0131n G\u00fcrlek on July 28 and separately asked parliament\u2019s Human Rights Inquiry Committee to examine Y\u0131ld\u0131r\u0131m\u2019s health and continued imprisonment in light of his right to life and right to access health services. According to medical reports cited in Do\u011fan\u2019s applications, Y\u0131ld\u0131r\u0131m\u2019s health had deteriorated as his imprisonment continued beyond his conditional release date.<\/p>\n

Y\u0131ld\u0131r\u0131m was among five prisoners transferred to \u0130mral\u0131 Prison in 2015 at the request of jailed PKK leader Abdullah \u00d6calan during a peace process between the Turkish government and the PKK. He was transferred out of \u0130mral\u0131 nine days later due to health problems. He has been held<\/a> at \u0130zmir K\u0131r\u0131klar High-Security Prison since September 2018, where he has been kept in solitary confinement.<\/p>\n

Administration and Observation Boards, established in Turkish prisons in January 2021, have faced criticism from opposition parties<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0human rights groups<\/a>\u00a0for arbitrarily rejecting or delaying the conditional release or probation of political prisoners, particularly those imprisoned over G\u00fclen links or pro-Kurdish political engagement, on grounds such as \u201cfailure to display remorse.\u201d<\/p>\n

They have described the repeated rejections as politically motivated and a violation of prisoners\u2019 rights, saying the boards exceed their authority and act like courts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u0130zmir K\u0131r\u0131klar Prison and Mehmet Sait Y\u0131ld\u0131r\u0131m Kurdish prisoner Mehmet Sait Y\u0131ld\u0131r\u0131m, 75, was hospitalized due to a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":153396,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[83],"tags":[72223,72224,12001,14049,312,67256,5954,72225,131,132,155],"class_list":["post-153395","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-stockholm","tag-ali-ihsan-guven","tag-aysegul-dogan","tag-conditional-release","tag-critically-ill-prisoners","tag-human-rights","tag-kurdish-inmate","tag-kurdistan-workers-party-pkk","tag-mehmet-sait-yildirim","tag-stockholm","tag-sweden","tag-turkey"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@dk\/117163508962973411","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/153395","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=153395"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/153395\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/153396"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=153395"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=153395"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=153395"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}