26 Hunger Strike in the Pendulum of Ethics and Law consequences of their act and the physical and mental damage it may cause to them. The psycho-social service unit shall also take the necessary actions to ensure them to discontinue this act, and if such initiatives are of no avail, the process for their feeding shall be started in an appropriate environment according to the regime determined by the physician at the institution.” Within the framework of this statutory arrangement, force-feeding is a process that may be performed by a physician or officers at the penitentiary institution in any appropriate place at the penitentiary institution and that is intended for ensuring intake of nourishment by the person concerned.86 Therefore, force-feeding of a striker who is still conscious and is not a patient may not amount to a medical intervention. Article 82 of Law no. 5275 is not formulated in a way that would necessarily require the performance of this process through medical methods. This process always constitutes an intervention with physical integrity but is not always in the form of a medical intervention. If this process involves any medical methods such as vascular injection by a physician, it will then constitute a medical intervention. In the Law, the notion act is used instead of the words strike or death fast. That is because the prisoner may refuse to take food for any other reason such as a psychological problem or desire to commit suicide. However, it is a well-known fact that the refusal to take nourishment may be associated, by the vast majority, with the probability of hunger strike. In cases where the prisoner consistently87 refuses to take nourishment in order to protest, it should be accepted that the hunger strike process starts. At this very stage, the State is to take an action. The physician at the penitentiary institution informs the person concerned and 86 Ayşe Özge Atalay, “İnfaz Kurumlarındaki Açlık Grevlerine Devlet Müdahalesi Sorunu (Matter of State Intervention with the Hunger Strikes at the Penitentiary Institutions)”, Bahçeşehir Üniversitesi Hukuk Fakültesi Dergisi, Issue:109 – 110, September - October 2013, p. 71. 87 Any certain period is not specified in the Turkish legislation. At the Federal Penitentiary Institutions in the USA, this period is envisaged as 72 hours. Upon the expiry of 72nd hour, the person concerned is considered as a hunger striker (Gordon, p. 350). According to the opinion with which we also agree, it is not reasonable to determine a certain period of time in this sense. The starting period of hunger strike should be determined on the basis of the physical characteristics that may vary by person (Levy, p. 9).
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