Mehdi Zana and the Struggle for Kurdish Ethnic Identity in Turkey

Abstract

When Mehdi Zana wrote these words, he had been a prisoner of conscience² for more than a decade, and he would be imprisoned again for his activism in support of his people, the Kurds. His body bears witness to the torture he endured at the hands of the Turkish state. His imprisonment was the Turkish state’s validation and criminalization of his Kurdish identity His book, Prison No. 5, publicized Turkey’s abuses to the international community at a time before Kurds had become a focal point of Middle Eastern politics; Zana lived through years during which Turkey could, and did, deny Kurdish identity. Zana’s writing, specifically Prison No. 5, records the dehumanizing policies and practices of the Turkish state and succinctly tells the history of the Kurds.

My name is Mehdi Zana. I am Kurdish, a Kurd from Turkey. I was the mayor of Diyarbakir, the most important city in the region where the Kurds live in Turkish Kurdistan.

Starting in 1980, I was imprisoned for ten years and eight months, under conditions that Europeans would find hard to imagine. I was imprisoned with other Kurds, some of whom are dead today. I was tortured to such an extent that I continue to suffer from the aftereffects. My imprisonment was due to my having repeatedly taken positions in favor of something that seems elementary to me: the rights of Kurds.¹