ISTANBUL (Reuters) - Jailed Kurdish militants on hunger strike in Turkey may start to die within the next 10 days, Turkey's main medical association warned on Thursday, saying the prime minister's dismissal of the protest as a "show" risked hardening their resolve.
The hunger strike entered its 51st day on Thursday, with some 700 prisoners refusing food in dozens of prisons across Turkey, demanding the government address grant greater Kurdish minority rights and better conditions for their jailed leader.
But the inmates are consuming sugar, water and vitamins that would prolong their lives and the protest by weeks.
The main demand of the protesters, mostly convicted members of the armed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) militant group, is improved jail conditions for PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan, imprisoned on an island in the Marmara Sea south of Istanbul.
The protests follow a surge in violence between Turkey and the PKK, which took up arms 28 years ago to try to carve out a Kurdish homeland in Turkey's southeast and which is designated a terrorist group by Ankara, the United States and European Union.
"Our worry is that after around 40 days lasting damage begins to emerge and after 60 days deaths may begin," Ozdemir Aktan, head of the Turkish Medical Association (TTB), which represents 80 percent of the nation's doctors, told Reuters.
Dozens of leftist prisoners died in a previous hunger strike over a decade ago, but Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan has played down the latest action, saying only one prisoner was on a "death fast" and was being monitored medically.
"Currently there is no such thing as a hunger strike. This is a complete show," he told reporters in Berlin on Wednesday.
He has said the inmates were being manipulated by "merchants of death", a reference to the PKK and Kurdish politicians, and said he would not be pressured into meeting their demands.
On Wednesday, Erdogan again accused Kurdish politicians of ordering the militants to go on strike while they themselves feasted on kebabs.
"Such statements make those taking part in hunger strikes more determined, motivating those who may have been considering giving up to continue. This can bring with it various illnesses and deaths," Aktan said.
Justice Minister Sadullah Ergin told reporters on Wednesday 683 people were on hunger strike in 66 jails.
PRESIDENT AND PRIME MINISTER AT ODDS
The hunger strike is another area of apparent difference between Erdogan and President Abdullah Gul, who have traded barbed comments in recent days over the police handling of a banned march.
In contrast to Erdogan's hard line, Gul was on Thursday quoted by Milliyet newspaper as saying he retained "sensitivity" on the issue and would seek a solution.
Aktan said the TTB had asked the justice ministry several times for permission to enter prisons and monitor the situation but had not yet received a response.
Authorities accepted such a request during a previous hunger strike in 2000 when 122 people died. That total includes 30 prisoners and two guards killed when security forces stormed jails to end the far-left protest against isolation in cells.
Hundreds more suffered permanent health damage and the TTB said inmates were again at risk from neurological illnesses such as Wernicke-Korsakoff syndrome, a condition caused by thiamine deficiency whose symptoms include memory loss, hallucinations and loss of muscle coordination.
Aktan said past experience showed that when doctors were able to explain the health risks involved some people gave up hunger strikes, but that there should be no attempt to use doctors as a means of ending the protest.
Parliament's human rights commission visited Bolu prison in northwest Turkey to assess the protests on Thursday.
Government officials have not commented on the prisoners' demands, but the Hurriyet newspaper said on Thursday the justice ministry was working on a measure to allow Kurdish language defense in court - one of the things the protesters want.
Kurds make up roughly a fifth of Turkey's population but for decades an avowedly nationalist state refused to recognize their existence and banned their language and culture.
Erdogan's government has introduced reforms granting greater Kurdish cultural rights since taking power a decade ago, but Turkey is also prosecuting hundreds of Kurdish lawyers, academics, activists and politicians on suspicion of PKK links.
More than 40,000 people have been killed since the militants took up arms in 1984 with the aim of carving out an independent state for Turkish Kurds, who now number around 15 million.
(Writing by Daren Butler; Editing by Nick Tattersall and Jon Hemming)
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