Turkey police block rally backing Kurdish hunger strikes

Security forces prevented the women from gathering in a park in the city of Diyarbakir in the majority-Kurdish region, an AFP journalist at the scene said.

They were mostly the wives and mothers of thousands of prisoners on hunger strike in a bid to improve the detention conditions of Abdullah Ocalan, co-founder of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK). 

The PKK is blacklisted as a terror group by Ankara and its Western allies.

Ocalan has been serving a life sentence for treason in an island prison near Istanbul since his capture in 1999. He has not had access to his lawyers since 2011.

"We are proud of the resistance in our prisons... Pressure will not intimidate us," the protestors shouted before being forced to disperse. 

One woman fainted and at least six men who came to support the women were detained.

Despite his near-total isolation, Ocalan remains the figurehead of the Kurdish insurgency in Turkey, which has claimed more than 40,000 lives since 1984.

Some 3,000 prisoners are currently on a partial hunger strike - refusing to eat solid food - according to the pro-Kurdish Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP). 

The party says eight prisoners have committed suicide over the issue in recent months.