5 Union of Turkish Bar Associations Review 2022 Süleyman ÖZAR whether the convict has embarked on the protest on his own free will or against his will. In case of a hunger strike which is not based on free will, the hunger is real, whereas the strike is a pseudo-protest. Therefore, the State is liable to inquire whether the protest is based on the free will of the person concerned. The burden of proof is on the State. If it is found established that the protest is not based on the striker’s free will, it is the State’s duty to intervene with the situation and to protect the striker against the organisations putting pressure on his real will.7 2. History The first hunger strike in the history is shown as the protest of the exiled political convicts in the Czarist Russia at the end of the 19th century, which was of a modern-political nature. However, the time when hunger strikes set the world alight and attracted attention is the very beginning of the 20th century when the women seeking voting rights in England embarked on a strike.8 In London in 1909, a convicted woman named Marion Wallace Dunlop, who had been sentenced to one month’s imprisonment for her failure to pay the fine imposed on her as she had written a passage9 from the 1689 Bill of Rights on the wall of the House of Commons, was released in the 91st hour of her death fast.10 This event was the first sensational case which demonstrated that hunger strikes might be resorted as an effective protest against the administration. In the subsequent period, several hunger strikes drawing world-wide attraction and passing into history took place in Ireland, India, the USA, Spain and South Africa. The hunger strike em7 Şahin Akıncı, “İrade Muhtariyeti İlkesi ve Şahsiyet Hakları Açısından Ötenazi, Açlık Grevi ve Ölüm Orucu (Euthanasia, Hunger Strike and Death Fast in terms of Principle of Party Autonomy and Personal Rights”, Selçuk Üniversitesi Hukuk Fakültesi Dergisi, Prof. Dr. Süleyman Arslan’a Armağan, Issue 6, 1998, p. 755. 8 For the history of hunger strike, see Murat Sevinç, “Bir İnsan Hakları Sorunu Olarak Açlık Grevleri (Hunger Strikes as a Human Rights Issue)”, Ankara Üniversitesi SBF Dergisi, 57-1, 2002, p. 114-116. 9 “It is the right of all citizens to submit a petition to the King, and all commitments and prosecutions for such petitioning are illegal.” https://www.exploringsurreyspast.org.uk/themes/subjects/womens-suffrage/ suffrage-biographies/marion-wallace-dunlop-1864-1942/ 10 https://www.museumoflondon.org.uk/discover/six-things-you-didn’t-knowabout-suffragette-hunger-strikes
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