DIYARBAKIR, Turkey — As election fever engulfs Turkey ahead of local polls in March, a hunger strike that began quietly in a prison in Diyarbakir is spreading to prisons across the country, with activists warning that Ankara’s apathy might lead to grave consequences.

The hunger strike was initiated two months ago by Leyla Guven, a lawmaker for the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), who has been in prison for nearly a year over her critical social media posts on Turkey’s military operation in Afrin, northern Syria.

Guven announced the hunger strike during the Nov. 7 hearing in her trial, held at the courthouse in Diyarbakir, the largest city of Turkey’s Kurdish-majority southeast. Speaking via a video link from prison, she described Abdullah Ocalan, the jailed leader of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which Ankara considers a terrorist organization, as a key figure in any peace effort to resolve the Kurdish question and denounced the restrictions that Ankara has placed on visits to Ocalan in prison. “Isolation is a crime against humanity, regardless of whoever is subjected to it," she said. "As of today, I’m starting an indefinite and uninterrupted hunger strike."

Though Guven cited Ocalan’s “isolation” as the reason for her hunger strike, the restrictions are not officially acknowledged as “isolation” by the Turkish state. The visitor restrictions on the PKK leader began in April 2015, shortly before the peace process between Ankara and the Kurds collapsed. No visitors were allowed to see Ocalan for nearly a year and a half after an HDP delegation paid him a visit in April 2015. Ocalan’s meeting with his brother in September 2016 became possible as a result of another hunger strike.