Leyla Zana

Leyla Zana, born Leyla Silvan in Silvan, Diyarbakır Province, in 1961, is a Kurdish politician and writer in Turkey known for her advocacy of Kurdish rights and of a democratic, federal solution for the country. She matters because she was the first Kurdish woman elected to the Turkish Grand National Assembly, and because her case became an international symbol of the suppression of the Kurdish language and expression.

At fourteen she was married to her cousin Mehdi Zana, who became mayor of Diyarbakır in 1975. After the 1980 military coup and her husband's imprisonment, Zana campaigned to draw attention to political prisoners and to call for an amnesty. She began studying at twenty-three and completed her primary and secondary qualifications in three years. In the early 1990s she helped found Yeni Ülke, one of the first newspapers published in Kurdish.

In 1991 she entered parliament with the backing of many Kurdish voters. When she took her oath she wore a headband in the colours of the Kurdish flag, then banned, and spoke the final words of the oath in Kurdish. The gesture caused a scandal and calls for her arrest. In 1994 she was convicted, together with other deputies, of alleged links to the PKK, a charge she denied. She remained in prison until 2004. In the meantime she received the European Parliament's Sakharov Prize, which she could not collect until her release.

While in prison she wrote texts that were later published in a book. The European Court of Human Rights found that her trial had violated her rights, although Turkey did not immediately accept the ruling. After her release she took part again in Kurdish political movements, and in the following years she faced further convictions, arrests and the revocation of her seat in 2018.

Her legacy is contested. She is widely recognised abroad as a champion of peaceful struggle for Kurdish cultural and linguistic rights, yet her public support for Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in 2012 drew criticism from within the Kurdish movement itself, and her political positions remain a matter of debate.