75 days on hunger strike: Nuriye Gülmen and Semih Özakça have been taken by the police in Ankara

The Guardian newspaper is reporting that our friends Nuriye Gülmen and Semih Özakça have been taken by the police in Ankara on the 75th day of their hunger strike. We have run several artcles about this struggle. The Guardian reports that:

Two Turkish teachers who are on their 75th day of a hunger strike have been detained by police in Ankara.

Nuriye Gülmen, a professor of literature, and Semih Özakça, a primary school teacher, have been on strike for more than 10 weeks after losing their jobs following the failed coup against the president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, last July.

Surviving on a liquid diet of lemon and saltwater and sugar solutions, the pair have lost significant amounts of weight and doctors said this month that their health was deteriorating. A source close to the strikers said their muscles had atrophied.

Police are concerned the strike will become a “death fast” rather than a hunger strike. The detention appears to have been motivated by fears that the strike could be taken up as a cause celebre and evolve into a larger movement like the Gezi park protests in 2013, when hundreds of thousands of people protested against plans to build a replica Ottoman barracks in central Istanbul.

Read the entire article here.