Following the military intervention of 1980 the number of people who died during interrogation or in prison increased. As a result of the unsanitary conditions and torture in prisons, 299 people died while incarcerated.

Fourteen died during hunger strikes, 16 were shot to death because they were supposedly trying to escape from prison and 43 people committed suicide. On 18 May 1982, four young prisoners, Mahmut Zengin, Esref Anyik, Ferhat Kurtay and Necmi Oner, rolled up in newspapers and sprayed with paint and holding hands, burned themselves alive in protest and have since become important figures in Kurdish collective memory and in the martyrdom discourse of the PKK. Like any other militant organization in Turkey the PKK calls all members who lose their lives in armed combat, but also in prison a martyr.