From Weakness To Resistance: A Portrait Of Leyla Zana

     Not long after she was sentenced to prison, Leyla Zana was
honoured with several international peace prizes. She was given
the Rosa Prize from Denmark, the Aachen Alternative Peace Prize,
and the Rafto Association's Peace Prize from Norway, and most
recently she was awarded the Bruno Kreisky Peace Prize from
Austria. In addition to all of this, Norway has nominated her for
the Nobel Peace Prize. Who is Leyla Zana, and why have so many
people across the world given her so many prizes in such a short
period of time?
     Leyla Zana, who is known well beyond the borders of Turkey
and Kurdistan, and who has been imprisoned in Ankara since March
1994, caused quite a sensation when she was elected to the
Turkish Parliament in 1991 and, along with her male colleague
Hatip Dicle, added a referenced to "Turkish-Kurdish brotherhood"
in her inaugural oath. For the first time since the founding of
the Turkish Republic, someone dared to speak in the Kurdish
language before the eyes of watching Members of Parliament and TV
viewers. And in yet another first, she took hear inaugural oath
wearing the Kurdish national colours, red, green, and yellow.
     Together with her other colleagues from the Democracy Party
(DEP), Leyla Zana attempted to deal with the Kurdish problem at
the political level. She made it her task to make the Kurdish
question an issue in the Turkish Parliament. But she knew from
day one that this would be a very difficult task. Would a
Parliament that did not even allow people to wear the Kurdish
national colours allow a discussion of the situation of the
Kurds? It was a heavy task which this young MP took on. Where did
she get so much courage?
     A close examination will reveal that the life and personal
development of Leyla Zana closely mirrors that of the uprising of
the Kurdish people; a sort of microcosm of the entire Kurdish
resistance movement. The will for social and personal freedom was
the basis for her activities. It was this resistance throughout
her entire life that made it possible for her to fight to change
the present conditions.
     The female gender in the village of Bahce, where Leyla Zana
was born in 1961, had very little to do and was supposed to stay
hidden. But Leyla was never easy to control and she rebelled even
then. Before her wedding, she had never worn a head garment, and
even then she only wore it for a short time. She didn't seem too
concerned when everyone thought she was crazy for tossing the
head garment on the ground. She was just 14 years old in 1975
when she was forced to marry her father's cousin, a man 20 years
older than she. Even when she reacted angrily to the idea of this
marriage and beat her father with her fists, something no other
Kurdish girl would surely ever do, she still had an amazingly
clear analysis of her situation: "I don't blame my family or my
husband, rather I blame the social conditions. These must be
changed."
     The possibilities for changing both personal and social
conditions actually improved after her marriage to Mehdi Zana, an
active Kurd. It was through him that Leyla first encountered
state repression, and this was what politicized her.
     In 1976, Leyla went with her husband to Diyarbakir and soon
the illiterate woman, still only 15, gave birth to a son. The
following year, her husband was elected Mayor of Diyarbakir.
After the 1980 military coup, Mehdi Zana was arrested and
sentenced to 30 years in prison. Leyla Zana was now a young,
single mother, her son Ronay was 5 and she was pregnant with her
daughter Ruken. Whereas before she had been heavily influenced by
her relatives, now she was forced "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
Askisehir. While doing so, she learned to speak Turkish so that
she could be more effective outside the prisons, and she even
managed to study on her own. In Diyarbakir, she became the first
woman ever to get a high school diploma without ever attending
school. She eventually became the spokesperson for all the women
who were waiting for their husbands in prison and her personal
authority continued to grow. In the 1980s, she was active in
promoting women's self-organization and she founded and chaired a
women's group which eventually opened offices in Istanbul and
Diyarbakir. She also became active as a journalist for 'Yeni
Ulke', eventually becoming editor at the Diyarbakir office. These
and many other examples clearly show that her personal
development was virtually synonymous with the development of the
Kurdish liberation struggle, and this culminated with her
candidacy for Parliament in the 1991 elections.
     Leyla Zana was the first Kurdish woman ever elected to the
Turkish Parliament. She received 45,000 votes in her district in
Diyarbakir, more than any other candidate. After her election,
she moved to Ankara. Her incredible energy and courageous actions
on behalf of the 16 million Kurds in Turkey made her famous
throughout the entire country: hungerstrike to protest army
attacks on the Kurdish New Year festival 'Newroz'; funeral march
for a leading Kurdish politician, whose murdered body had been
found near a beach; countless visits to families who had been
victims of state violence and who had been deprived of their
means for existence.
     Leyla Zana, who has been in prison in Ankara for more than
15 months now, has become a symbol for the Kurdish resistance.
Her life and her fate are directly tied to the fate of the
Kurdish people. In Leyla Zana's own words: "Freedom has its
price." And she is prepared to pay it. It was predictable that
she would one day end up in prison, and she was prepared for
this. The important thing is that she is helping to solve the
problems of the Kurdish people.
     Immediately after being sentenced to prison, Leyla Zana was
showered with several international peace awards, and the
Norwegian Parliament has nominated her for this year's Nobel
Peace Prize. Her struggle, therefore, is no longer confined to
the borders of Kurdistan, rather hers is an international
struggle, one which is increasing in international resonance with
each passing day.
     In a recent interview, a spokesperson for the Bruno Kreisky
Association, Stefan August, answered the question as to why Leyla
Zana had been awarded the association's Peace Prize that year:
"We nominated Leyla Zana as a candidate to the independent jury.
We clearly explained the situation in both Turkey and Kurdistan.
The development of the struggle in Kurdistan has meant that not
only Austria has closely followed the events, but all the
countries of Europe have been able to see things unfold from very
close by. The discussion about Turkey's acceptance into the
Customs Union and Austria's ties to Turkey motivated our
decision. The lifting of the immunity of the DEP parliamentarians
and the verdict of Turkey's State Security Court, which
functioned as a special court for this trial, clearly revealed
Turkey's attitude with respect to the Kurdish question. We think
this is a serious situation. When we look at the Kurdish question
in its historical context, we think also of Africa or Russia.
This is a fundamental problem. That's why we made our decision
the way we did...Leyla Zana was awarded our prize for human
rights achievements as a representative of all the imprisoned DEP
parliamentarians."
     Norway gave the following reason for nominating Leyla Zana
for the Nobel Peace Prize: "Leyla Zana carried out courageous
politics in the interest of democratic rights for the Kurdish
people and for human rights. If she were not brave then she would
not have struggled to end this war and to find a peaceful
solution to the problem. The Turkish government put Leyla Zana
and her colleagues in prison illegally. We, as representatives of
the Norwegian people, would like to see Leyla Zana awarded the
Nobel Peace Prize, because in that way we could show solidarity
with their struggle for peace and democracy."

July 1995
Kurdistan Informations-Zentrum
Cologne, Germany

Translated by the Kurdistan Committee of Canada