Pro-Kurdish MPs End Hunger Strike in Turkey

Six pro-Kurdish lawmakers on Friday ended a hunger strike they began on Tuesday to denounce court rulings against the release of jailed MPs with suspected links to Kurdish rebels.

"We have ended our action. We hope that our fellow lawmakers will be released," one of the strikers Sebahat Tuncel told journalists.

The lawmakers have remained in Turkey's parliament since they launched their strike.

Last week, a journalist and lawmaker from the opposition Republican People's Party (CHP) Mustafa Balbay was freed from prison pending appeal after Turkey's top Constitutional Court ruled his pre-trial detention of more than four years had violated his rights.

The move raised expectations among the ranks of the pro-Kurdish Peace and Democracy Party (BDP) that it could set a precedent for its jailed deputies.

But two courts in the Kurdish-dominated southeastern city of Diyarbakir rejected on Monday an appeal to release four BDP lawmakers and an independent deputy, who have been in detention since 2010 suspected of links to the banned Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK).

Then on Friday a third court rejected a similar request.

The lawmakers say these rulings are harmful to the peace process between the Turkish state and the PKK, which is blacklisted as a terrorist organization by Ankara and much of the international community.

The peace process stalled after Kurdish rebels announced in September they were suspending their retreat from Turkish soil.

They accuse the government of failing to deliver on promised reforms.