Imprisoned Kurdish leader Abdullah Ocalan called on Sunday thousands of jailed supporters in Turkey to end their hunger strike, which they had started in protest against his detention conditions.
Ocalan, the co-founder of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) held on Imrali island off Istanbul since 1999, was allowed to see his lawyers this month for the first time in eight years.
"I expect the action to come to an end in light of the broad statements to be made by my two lawyers," Ocalan said in a message read by his lawyer Nevroz Uysal during a press conference in Istanbul.
The first visit took place on May 2. After Turkish authorities lifted an official ban on lawyers' visits to Ocalan, a second trip by two of his lawyers was made on May 22.
His lawyers said during their visit on May 22, Ocalan said the hunger strikes "had achieved their goal" and was insistent in his call for the action to end.
Several imprisoned supporters ended their hunger strike soon after his call.
Some 3,000 prisoners across different prisons were on hunger strike, the pro-Kurdish Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) has said, in solidarity with one of the party's lawmakers who launched the action in November.
MP Leyla Guven was in custody when she went on hunger strike to protest Ocalan's isolation from his family and lawyers but she was later released.
Other detainees then followed suit. Eight people also killed themselves over the issue, according to the HDP.
Ocalan's PKK, blacklisted by Ankara and its Western allies as a terror group, has been waging an insurgency against the Turkish state since 1984 during which more than 40,000 people have been killed.
Ocalan was caught in February 1999 in Kenya and jailed several months later after he was found guilty of treason, separatism and murder.
