Leyla Zana is a female Kurdish human-rights activist in Turkey, who was imprisoned for speaking Kurdish in the Turkish parliament. She was awarded the 1995 Sakharov Prize by the European Parliament, but was unable to collect it until her release in 2004.

Biography

Zana was elected to the Turkish Parliament in 1991 from Diyarbakir, a municipality in Turkey. When taking her parliamentary oath, she spoke Kurdish and wore a headband with the colors of the Kurdish flag, which were banned activities prior to 2002, and inflamed antipathy toward her. 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, Zana and the others were sentenced to 15 years in prison. 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.

With Turkey's position as an applicant to the European Union, the EU repeatedly called for her release on human rights grounds, making its position clear with the award of the 1995 Sakharov Prize. 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 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.

External Links

• Amnesty International
• ECHR judgement
• PEN summary of case