Kurdish politician Leyla Zana, a former Nobel Peace Prize nominee and Sakharov Prize recipient, was sentenced to three years in prison by a Turkish court on last Thursday, the latest in a sequence of convictions against her for scattering terrorist propaganda in two demonstrations: a Kurdish political congress and a protest meeting in 2008.

Leyla Zana was convicted by the court in the southeastern Kurdish city of Diyarbakir for speeches she made where she has expressed that the PKK and its jailed leader are "as important for the Kurdish people as the brain and the soul are for a human being."

Leyla Zana won a seat in the Turkish Parliament in 1991, as the first Kurdish woman ever to be elected. Her decision to deliver the pledge in Kurdish led to a 15 years sentence of which she served 10. She was released in 2004 due to huge international pressure. Zana following a GUE/NGL request come to the European Parliament last February.

In spite of Turkish authorities’ atrocious political actions against Kurds in Turkey and Europe and her own sufferings and losses during her 10 years of imprisonment, Leyla Zana remains a strong voice for peace and democracy and claims that it can only be obtained by a non-violent political solution. She demands Turkey to open talks with the Kurds in which representatives of the PKK should be incorporated.  

The GUE/NGL Group will demand that this issue is raised during the next Plenary Session in Strasbourg