Leyla Zana

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Leyla Zana (born May 3, 1961), is a female Kurdish politician in Turkey, who was imprisoned for speaking Kurdish in the Turkish Parliament after taking her parliamentary oath and for her political actions which were considered against the unity of Turkey. She was awarded the 1995 Sakharov Prize by the European Parliament, but was unable to collect it until her release in 2004.

[edit] Biography

She was born in May 1961, in Silvan near Diyarbakır, in the southeast of Turkey. She is married to Mehdi Zana who was the mayor of Diyarbakır until the military coup d'état and a political prisoner after it. Zana was elected to Parliament of Turkey in 1991. When taking her parliamentary oath, she spoke Kurdish and wore a headband with the colours of the Kurdish flag, which were banned activities prior to 2002, and inflamed antipathy toward her. At her inauguration as a MP, she reportedly identified herself as a Kurd. Amnesty International reported "She took the oath of loyalty in Turkish, as required by law, then added in Kurdish, 'I shall struggle so that the Kurdish and Turkish peoples may live together in a democratic framework.' Parliament erupted with shouts of 'Separatist', 'Terrorist', and 'Arrest her'"[1],[2].

Although her parliamentary immunity protected her, after she joined the Democracy Party, that party was banned and her immunity was stripped. In December 1994, along with four other Democracy Party MPs (Hatip Dicle, Selim Sadak and Orhan Dogan), she was arrested and charged with treason and membership in the armed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK). The treason charges were not put before the court, and Zana denied PKK affiliation; but with the prosecution relying on witness statements allegedly obtained under torture [3], Zana and the others were sentenced to 15 years in prison.

She was recognized as a "Prisoner of Conscience" by Amnesty International. In 1994 she was awarded the Rafto Prize, and in 1995, she won the Bruno Kreisky Award. In 1998 her sentence was extended because of a letter she had written that was published in a Kurdish newspaper, which allegedly expressed banned pro-separatist views. While in prison she published a book titled Writings from Prison.

With Turkey applying to become a member of the European Union, the EU repeatedly called for her release on human rights grounds, making its position clear by awarding Zana with the Sakharov Prize in 1995.

In 2001 the European Court of Human Rights ruled against Turkey after a review of her trial; although Turkey did not recognize the result, in 2003 a new harmonization law permitted retrials based on ECHR decisions. In 2002, a film named The Back of the World examined her case. In April 2004, in a trial which the defendants frequently boycotted, their convictions and sentences were reaffirmed. In June 2004, after a prosecutor requested quashing the prior verdict on a technicality, the Turkish Supreme Court of Appeals ordered Zana and the others released.

In January 2005, the European Court of Human Rights awarded Zana and each of the other defendants €9,000 from the Turkish government, ruling Turkey had violated her rights of free expression. Zana and others plan to form a new party and re-enter politics.