ISTANBUL — Kurdish politicians have called on prisoners to stop taking their own lives after a spate of suicides and an ongoing hunger strike while the Turkish government refuses to meet their demands.

Hundreds or thousands of inmates, depending on the source, are refusing solid food to pressure Turkey to improve imprisonment conditions for Abdullah Ocalan, the 70-year-old founder of the armed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) who is serving a life sentence for treason and has not been allowed to meet with lawyers for several years.

Four protesters have killed themselves in Turkish prisons since March 16 and a fifth died of his wounds after setting himself on fire in Germany, the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) said in an emailed statement. None of the suicide victims were on the hunger strike, the HDP said. Three of the Turkish prisoners were women in their 20s.

“We defend life and sustaining life, not death. Regardless of the reason, we do not think it’s right to end one’s own life,” Pervin Buldan, the joint chairwoman of the HDP, said on Tuesday after meeting figures from other pro-Kurdish parties in Diyarbakir, Turkey’s biggest Kurdish city. “We are openly calling on everyone to prevent these kind of acts from continuing.”