TURKEY faced mounting international pressure yesterday to end a hunger strike in its prisons, as EU sources said Brussels could block financial aid if conditions for prisoners were not improved.
The 68 day strike for better living conditions has so far left eight prisoners dead, and was joined yesterday by thousands of Kurdish prisoners, but Ankara has refused to make concessions.
An EU source said the European Parliament had threatened to block all financial aid for Ankara if conditions were not improved, while Germany, France and Italy also called for action by Turkey's new Islamist led government.
Meanwhile, a number of attacks and demonstrations in protest at the Turkish government's intransigence took place across Europe yesterday. In Zurich, around 200 stone throwing demonstrators protested outside the Turkish consulate, smashing windows and surveillance cameras, and placing a coffin in front of the building.
About 40 Turks and Kurds occupied the premises of the Swiss Socialist party in Basel to draw attention to the prisoners' protest, and a Turkish owned petrol station was fire bombed overnight, the fourth such attack in Switzerland this week.
In Stockholm, some 20 Turks and Kurds occupied the offices of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, while four Kurds were detained by police in Northeim, northern Germany, following a fresh series of attacks on Turkish targets there.
The European Commissioner for Foreign Relations, Mr Hans van den Broek, wrote to the Turkish Foreign Minister, Ms Tansu Ciller, expressing "deep concern over the situation.
According to his spokesman, he urged Ms Ciller to do "all she can" to avoid more deaths.
Ms Pauline Green, president of the Socialist group in the European Parliament, wrote to the president of the parliament asking him to press the EU Council of Ministers to take a stand. She has also asked the Commission to provide an interim report on the performance of the customs union between the EU and Turkey.
The president of the European Parliament's foreign affairs commission, Mr Gerardo Fernandez Albor, asked Mr van den Broek to "make a very firm approach to the Turkish authorities" to end the crisis without delay and improve prison conditions.
A source close to the German government said the Foreign Minister, Mr Klaus Kinkel, had written to Ms Ciller saying that Bonn expected that measures already announced to improve conditions, would be implemented soon.
The Interior Minister, Mr Manfred Kanther, called on Turkey to "get down to improving human rights" and he regretted that anger over the strike had spilled over into a wave of arson attacks on Turkish interests in Germany.
The French Foreign Minister, Mr Herve de Charette, has also written to Ms Ciller, his office said, while members of the Socialist and Communist Parties denounced the Turkish authorities' prison policy.
A woman prisoner, Ayce Idil Erkmen (22), a member of the far left People's Revolutionary Liberation Army and Front (DHKP-C), who died in jail yesterday brought the death toll to eight.