Turkey has urged Belgium to act against exiled leaders of a radical leftist group, said to be behind a massive hunger strike by inmates and their ongoing protests, Turkey's justice minister has said.
The two-month "death fast" was directed by senior members of the armed Revolutionary People's Liberation Party-Front (DHKP-C), many of whom are based in Brussels, Hikmet Sami Turk was quoted as saying by the mass-circulation daily Sabah.
Paramilitaries stormed 20 jails across the country last week to end the "death fast" by hundreds of inmates, mostly members of extreme leftist groups, against the opening of new jails with smaller cells.
The toll of the four-day crackdown hit 29 on Monday as a female inmate died in hospital from burns sustained after she set herself on fire, Anatolia news agency reported.
Officials have said that 16 other inmates died by self-immolation, while 10 prisoners and two soldiers were killed when inmates used arms and explosives to resist the raids.
The inmates' acts were directed by telephone orders from DHKP-C leaders in Brussels, Turk said.
"The Belgian government should take action against terrorism. We have made some requests on the issue both through the Turkish embassy in Belgium and the Belgian mission in Turkey," the minister was quoted as saying.
Ankara has urged Brussels to track and identify the telephone numbers of the strike masterminds and take legal action against them, he said.
A senior foreign ministry official, who asked not to be named, confirmed that diplomatic efforts were under way, but declined to give details.
"As a matter of fact, we have been constantly asking Belgium since the mid-1990s to prevent the activities of this terrorist group and to close down their office in Brussels," he told AFP.
Turk said that Turkey had also asked Belgium to prevent the DHKP-C from issuing messages in support of the death fast and self-immolation acts through its websites -- apparently also run from Belgium.
But the sites were already hacked Saturday by a group calling itself the "Turkish security team."
In a message placed under a Turkish flag, the hackers said: "DHKP-C sites have been seized in the name of the Turkish people and martyrs."
DHKP-C, which aims to spark a revolution among the working classes, is blamed for a series of deadly attacks, including the murders of a former minister and several retired generals.
Some 100 policemen and soldiers as well as 80 civilians have been killed in the last 10 years in DHKP-C violence, officials say.
Besides Belgium, the group is also active in the Netherlands, France, Britain, Greece, Syria and Germany, officials told reporters at a recent briefing.
The group's headquarters was moved to Germany following the escape from prison in 1989 of DHKP-C leader Dursun Karatas, officials said -- ANKARA (AFP)
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