The legal group Halkin Hukuk Burosu, or the People’s Law Office, on Friday announced Koçak’s death on what it said was the 297th day of his hunger strike, and said their client had not been given the right to a fair trial.
“Know that the state murdered Mustafa so as not to hear him in court,” the group’s statement said on Twitter.
Koçak was serving a life sentence for attempting to overthrow the constitutional order, which he says he was tortured into confessing to.
Koçak’s bandmate Helin Bolek died on April 3 after an intermittent hunger strike of 288 days.
Koçak and Bolek - along with bandmate Ibrahim Gokçek, who is still continuing his protest – started their hunger strikes to demand the right to fair trials for band members, for the lifting of concert bans on the group, an end to raids on the band’s cultural centre, and for the release of imprisoned band members.
The folk collective has performed in various line-ups since it was formed in 1985 and has released 23 albums. But it has been barred from performing since 2016 as the Turkish authorities have accused members of being affiliated to the DHKP-C, a militant Marxist group considered a terrorist organisation by Turkey, the United States, and the European Union.
"All he wanted was a fair trial, they did not give him this chance. He became the latest victim of an unjust judgment," the pro-Kurdish People’s Democratic Party (HDP) lawmaker Omer Faruk Gergerlioglu said on Twitter in response to Koçak’s death.
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