About Leyla Zana

Aus: Zana, Leyla, Writings from prison, Watertown MA: Bluecrane Books, 1999 (Originalausgabe auf französisch 1995), S. XXII-XXVII.



Leyla Zana was born in 1961 to a traditional family in the small village of Bache in Eastern Turkey. One of four sisters and one brother, Leyla was a rebel from childhood. Defiant of the strict religion and a male dominated social order, she refused to wear a head scarf before she was married, and afterwords she wore one for a short time only.

She attended elementary school for a year and a half, only to be stopped by her extremely traditional father, who did not believe in educating girls.

At the age of fifteen she was married to her father's cousin, Mehdi Zana, a man twenty years her senior. Recalling her frustration at the time, when she angrily beat her father with her fists-something no other Kurdish girl would do-she says: "I don't blame my family or my husband, rather I blame the social conditions [in Kurdistan]. These must change."

Ironically, it was her marriage to Mehdi, a Kurdish activist, that presented her with the possibilities for change in both her personal and social conditions. Through him, Leyla encountered state repression in its fullest, and that inevitably politicized her.

After moving to Diyarbakir (the major Kurdish city in Eastern Turkey) with her husband, Leyla gave birth to their son, Ronay, in 1976. The following year, her husband was elected Mayor of Diyarbakir by an overwhelming margin.

The 1980 military coup in Turkey, however, brought about a new wave of oppression and persecution for Kurds. Political and individual freedoms were curtailed in the name of national security and democracy. Mehdi Zana was among thousands of activists who were arrested and tortured for their political beliefs. He was subsequently sentenced to thirty years in prison.

Leyla was now a young, single mother; her son, Ronay, was five, and she was pregnant with her daughter, Ruken. Whereas before she had been heavily influenced by her relatives, now she was forced, as she puts it, "to think for myself and act for myself." During the next few years, she followed her husband from prison to prison, from Diyarbakir to Aydin, from Afyon to Eskisehir. In the process, she learned to speak Turkish. Encouraged by her husband, she managed to study on her own and became the first woman in Dlyarbakir, to receive a high school diploma without attending school.

As the number of prisoners grew, Leyla became more and more involved in the plight of women whose husbands were abducted and imprisoned by the military regime. Eventually, she became their spokesperson and assumed an unsolicited leadership role. In the 1980s, she was active in promoting women's rights and founded and chaired a women's group, which eventually opened offices in Istanbul and Diyarbakir. She worked for the Diyarbakir branch of the Human Rights Association and was a correspondent for Yeni Ulke, later taking on the editorial position at the paper's Diyarbakir office. In 1988 she was herself severely tortured; she still bears the physical and psychological scars. Her personal development was virtually synonymous with the development of the Kurdish liberation struggle, and this culminated in her candidacy for Parliament in the 1991 elections in Turkey.

In October 1991, Leyla Zana was the first Kurdish woman to be elected to the Turkish Parliament. An extremely popular candidate, she received 84 percent of the votes in her district in Diyarbakir. An advocate of peace and of an end to the civil war raging in southeast Turkey, Leyla protested vehemently against the violence perpetrated by the Turkish Government toward the 16 million Kurds in Turkey.

On 17 May 1993 she was invited to Washington, D.C., together with Ahmet Turk, another Kurdish parliamentarian, to brief members of the U.S. Congress at the Helsinki Commission and to speak at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. She spoke of the destruction of Kurdish villages and the Kurdish people, and of the inability of the Turkish and Kurdish political leaders to address the Kurdish question with frankness and candor. She urged the U.S. Congress to side with the democratic forces in Turkey and to help bring about a peaceful resolution to the Kurdish conflict. Little did she know that her Washington talks would be used against her in the State Security Court in Ankara.

In March 1994 Leyla Zana and her colleagues Hatip Dicle, Orhan Dogan, Selim Sadak (in July), all Kurdish members of the Parliament, were stripped of their Parliamentary immunity and arrested. Charges of separatism and illegal activities were brought against the four for publicly advocating peaceful coexistence between the Turkish and Kurdish peoples. Expression of Kurdish identity in Parliament and even the color of their clothes were used as evidence against them. "That the defendant Leyla Zana on 18 October 1991 did wear clothes and accessories in yellow, green, red [colors associated with Kurdish flag] while addressing the people of Cizre on 18 October 199 1. " This statement was part of the grounds cited in convicting Leyla Zana (Verdict of Ankara State Security Court No 1, page 555). (See Appendix A: The Color of Their Clothes.)

In December 1994, the panel of Turkish civil and military judges convicted all four Parliamentarians. Leyla was sentenced to fifteen years in prison.

Since her arrest, a tremendous effort has been launched on her behalf by human rights organizations and the diplomatic community worldwide. She has received international recognition and numerous peace awards, among them the Raftos Prize for Human Rights from Norway (1994); the Bruno Kreisky Peace Prize from Austria (1995); the Aix-la-Chapelle International Peace Prize from Germany (1995); the Rose Prize from Denmark ( 1996); and the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought from the European Parliament (1995). In 1995, she was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize for the first time and was a finalist. She was invited for the Nobel Peace Prize for the third time in 1998 by, among others, U.S. Representative John Porter, Democrat of Illinois.

In April 1998, the Val d'Aosta Regional Council (Northern Italy) awarded its Woman of the Year Prize to leyla Zana. François Stevenin, President of the Council, praised leyla for her dedication: "First Kurdish woman in Turkish history to be elected to Parliament, she has sacrificed one's most fundamental possession, freedom, to defend her people. Sentenced and jailed in Ankara Prison, she has become the symbol of Kurdish struggle for the recognition of democratic values based on peace and social Justice."

In an interview published in the 13 August 1998 issue of the Turkish daily Milliyet, Leyla is unwavering in her beliefs. "So long as the Turkish Constitution of 1982 remains in force, I cannot believe there will be any real improvement or democratization [in Turkey]," she said. "I do not personally expect to be freed. . . . At one time the question of my release was raised, though for the wrong reasons. . . . What difference would my release make? Turkey's problems, the war, torture would all remain. Only I would be outside. Why? Outside to serve as a bit of window dressing for European public opinion. But I do not want to serve as decoration. For a while I was not well. The state decided that I was seriously ill so as to be able to release me on those grounds without admitting its errors. Today I feel better. The state continues to inflict new prison sentences on us and will go on doing so as long as we go on speaking and writing. Let them. I submit. My husband, my daughter, and my son are all out of the country. I remain here alone, but I accept my situation."

On 26 September 1998, on the very day that the European Parliament launched another appeal to the Turkish authorities for the immediate release of Leyla Zana, the Ankara State Security Court sentenced her to another two years in jail for an article that had appeared in the People's Democracy Party (HADEP) bulletin about Nevruz, the Kurdish New Year. According to the Court, by writing about the distinct identity of the Kurds, their ancestral traditions, and their struggle against oppression and for freedom, Ms. Zana has committed the crime of "inciting race hatred." [See the full text of this article on page 88]

In the past year, prison conditions have worsened for the Kurdish M.P.'s. Visitors are banned, and even the immediate family is not allowed the privilege of a private room. Medical care has become more difficult and is accompanied by various forms of harassment, insults, and ill-treatment. leyla Zana, who is now suffering from a liver condition in addition to her advanced osteoporosis, refuses  hospital visits under military escort, in protest of the maltreatment of political prisoners in Turkey. Meanwhile, the proceedings before the European Court for Human Rights on the petition for the release of the Kurdish M.P.'s is moving very slowly. It is unlikely that any verdict will be reached before the end of 1999.

Leyla Zana's husband, son, and daughter are In exile, and in spite of all international protest, she remains in Ankara Central Prison at the time of this publication. [Still true in 2004]