ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Turkey’s pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Equality and Democracy Party (DEM Party) has asked the veteran Kurdish politician Leyla Zana to run for the country’s local polls in March on the ticket of the party, Rudaw has learned.
Turkey will hold provincial elections on March 31. The DEM Party is seeking powerful candidates to perform well in the vote following the loss of a significant number of votes in the May parliamentary polls.
Rudaw has learned that the party has asked Zana to run for the elections in the Kurdish city of Amed (Diyarbakir).
The first Kurdish woman in the Turkish parliament, Zana has stirred up controversy several times.
She was dismissed from the Turkish legislature in 2018 for missing sessions.
“The dismissal of Leyla Zana from the parliament is seen by our people as nothing. Leyla Zana is the voice of peace, the will of the people, she is our deputy!” her party, the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), said at the time.
HDP is the sister party of the DEM Party.
Before taking her parliamentary oath on November 17, 2015 as the deputy for Agri after the most recent elections, she cheered in Kurdish “biji aşit,” meaning “long live peace.”
She also changed the wording of the oath to "the nation of Turkey" instead of the "Turkish nation."
In 1991, she defied Turkish law when she recited the final portion of her oath in Kurdish.
"I take this oath for the brotherhood between the Turkish people and the Kurdish people," she said, earning herself a 10-year prison term.
In 1995, the European Parliament awarded Zana the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought “for her courageous defence of human rights and commitment to forging a peaceful, democratic resolution to conflicts between the Turkish Government and its Kurdish population.”
On May 14, Turkey held parliamentary and presidential elections in which the HDP secured 61 of the 600 seats in the legislature, six fewer than their result in the 2018 poll. The party was criticized for endorsing opposition candidate Kemal Kilicdaroglu in the presidential election and not running a purely pro-Kurdish campaign. Following their poor performance, the party held a congress.
In June, party co-chairs Mithat Sancar and Pervin Buldan stepped down and later Tulay Hatimogullari and Tuncer Bakirhan were elected co-chairs of the DEM Party - which has replaced the HDP in the political scene due to HDP’s legal issues caused by its alleged links to Kurdish rebels.
Updated at 10:25 pm
