Leyla Zana
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Leyla Zana MP |
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| Member of the Grand National Assembly | |
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Assumed office 7 June 2015 |
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| Constituency | Ağrı (June 2015, Nov 2015) |
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In office 20 October 1991 – 30 June 1994 |
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| Constituency | Diyarbakır (1991) |
| Personal details | |
| Born |
3 May 1961 Silvan, Turkey |
| Political party |
Democratic Society Party (2005-2009) Peoples' Democratic Party (2014-present) |
| Occupation | Peace Activist |
Leyla Zana (born 3 May 1961 in Silvan, Diyarbakır Province), is a Kurdish politician, who was imprisoned for 10 years for her political activism, which was deemed by the Turkish courts to be against the unity of the country. When she was a member of pro-Kurdish Democratic Society Party, she was banned from joining any political party for five years with the Constitutional Court's decision to ban this party. She has been elected as an independent member of parliament for Diyarbakır by the support of Peace and Democracy Party.
She was awarded the 1995 Sakharov Prize by the European Parliament, but was unable to collect it until her release in 2004. She was also awarded the Rafto Prize in 1994 after being recognized by the Rafto Foundation for being incarcerated for her peaceful struggle for the human rights of the Kurdish people in Turkey and the neighbouring countries.
Leyla Zana was born in May 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.
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Wikipedia