Leyla Güven (born 6 May 1964,

Cihanbeyli Cihanbeyli is a municipality and district of Konya Province, Turkey Turkey, officially the Republic of Türkiye, is a country mainly located in Anatolia in West Asia, with a relatively small part called East Thrace in Southeast Europe. I ...

Konya Konya is a major city in central Turkey, on the southwestern edge of the Central Anatolian Plateau, and is the capital of Konya Province. During antiquity and into Seljuk times it was known as Iconium. In 19th-century accounts of the city in En ...

Turkey Turkey, officially the Republic of Türkiye, is a country mainly located in Anatolia in West Asia, with a relatively small part called East Thrace in Southeast Europe. It borders the Black Sea to the north; Georgia (country), Georgia, Armen ...

) is a Kurdish politician and HDP MP for Hakkari, co-chair of the Democratic Society Congress (DTK) and former mayor of the municipality of

Viranşehir Viranşehir () is a municipality and district of Şanlıurfa Province, Turkey. Its area is 2,297 km2, and its population is 207,315 (2022). It is a market town serving a cotton-growing area, 93 km east of the city Şanlıurfa and 53&nbs ...

in the

Şanlıurfa Province Şanlıurfa Province (; ), also known as Urfa Province, is a Provinces of Turkey, province and Metropolitan municipalities in Turkey, metropolitan municipality in southeastern Turkey. The city of Şanlıurfa is the capital of the province which be ...

of Southeast Anatolia of Turkey, where she represented the former

Democratic Society Party The Democratic Society Party (, DTP, Kurdish: ''Partiya Civaka Demokratîk'', PCD) was a Kurdish nationalist political party in Turkey. The party considered itself social-democratic and had observer status in the Socialist International. It was c ...

(DTP).

Early life and education

The seventh and youngest child of her family, Güven entered into an arranged marriage, in which she had two children who she brought up alone. In 1980 she moved to

Germany Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It lies between the Baltic Sea and the North Sea to the north and the Alps to the south. Its sixteen States of Germany, constituent states have a total popu ...

for family reasons, returning to Turkey in 1985. In 1994 she set up the Konya branch of Peoples Democracy Party (HADEP) She was active for several years as the Provincial Woman Branch Chairwoman of HADEP, until the party was dissolved in 2003. This involved numerous brushes with the law. In 2000 she was arrested during a HADEP demonstration. She was elected Mayor of Küçükdikili,

Adana Adana is a large city in southern Turkey. The city is situated on the Seyhan River, inland from the northeastern shores of the Mediterranean Sea. It is the administrative seat of the Adana Province, Adana province, and has a population of 1 81 ...

in the 2004 local elections, when she stood as a candidate for the Social Democratic People's Party (SHP) In 2006 she was again prosecuted as one of the signatories of the

ROJ TV Roj or ROJ may refer to: *Rój, a district in Poland * Roj TV, a Kurdish satellite television station *Roj Blake, the eponymous rebel leader from the BBC television series ''Blake's 7'' *Andrzej Gąsienica Roj (1930-1989), Polish skier who compete ...

petition to the Danish Prime Minister. In October 2007, she was one of five mayors arrested for expressing solidarity with the arrested mayor Osman Keser. On 20 May 2008 she was one of the signatories of the "Call for a peaceful settlement of the Kurdish question in Turkey", published in the

International Herald Tribune The ''International Herald Tribune'' (''IHT'') was a daily English-language newspaper published in Paris, France, for international English-speaking readers. It published under the name ''International Herald Tribune'' starting in 1967, but its ...

Politics

In the

2009 Turkish local elections Local elections were held in Turkey on 29 March 2009. The overall winner was the ruling party Justice and Development Party, although the party saw a decline in its vote relative to the 2007 general election. The leading opposition party, the s ...

Güven was elected Mayor of

. She was appointed a member of the

Congress of the Council of Europe The Congress of Local and Regional Authorities is the pan-European political assembly representing local and regional authorities from the forty-six member states of the Council of Europe. Its role is to promote local and regional democracy, imp ...

in September 2009 and was a key speaker during the Congress Plenary session debate, 14 October 2009, on the situation of local democracy in Southeast Anatolia. On 24 December 2009, she was detained in a large crack-down of Kurdish politicians. Her trial began in October 2010. Commenting on these arrests, the head of the

BBC The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) is a British public service broadcaster headquartered at Broadcasting House in London, England. Originally established in 1922 as the British Broadcasting Company, it evolved into its current sta ...

office in Istanbul suggested that the Turkish prosecutors were "closing down the already limited opportunities for dialogue between the state and its largest minority". In May 2010

Thomas Hammarberg Thomas Hammarberg (born 2 January 1942) is a Sweden, Swedish diplomat and human rights defender. He held the post of Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights in Strasbourg from 1 April 2006 to 31 March 2012. He succeeded the first Commi ...

, Council of Europe

Commissioner for Human Rights The Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights is an independent and impartial non-judicial institution established in 1999 by the Strasbourg-based Council of Europe, to promote awareness of and respect for human rights in the council's 46 ...

, visited her in prison in Diyarbakir and issued a declaration expressing his concern at the continued detention of so many Kurdish local elected representatives. In July 2014, after four years of detention, Güven was released with 30 other local elected representatives held in Diyarbakir. On 26 March 2016 she was elected co-chair of the Democratic Society Congress together with

Hatip Dicle Mehmet Hatip Dicle (born 1955, Diyarbakir, Turkey), is a Kurds, Kurdish politician from Turkey. He was a member of the Democracy Party, then of the Peace and Democracy Party (BDP). Early life and education Dicle grew up in a Kurds, Kurdish fam ...

. On 22 January 2018, Güven was detained and nine days later arrested for her criticism of the Turkish Military Operation Olive Branch in Afrin. It was alleged that the Democratic Society Congress, of which she is a co-chair, is part of the

Kurdistan Communities Union The Kurdistan Communities Union (, KCK) is a Kurdish political organization committed to implementing Abdullah Öcalan's ideology of democratic confederalism. The KCK also serves as an umbrella group for several confederalist political parties o ...

and therefore she was accused of the foundation and leadership of a forbidden organization. In the

Parliamentary Elections A general election is an electoral process to choose most or all members of a governing body at the same time. They are distinct from by-elections, which fill individual seats that have become vacant between general elections. General elections ...

of the 24 June 2018, Güven was elected an MP for Hakkari. According to the Law as an MP she was granted

parliamentary immunity Parliamentary immunity, also known as legislative immunity, is a system in which politicians or other political leaders are granted full immunity from legal prosecution, both civil prosecution and criminal prosecution, in the course of the exe ...

and her release was issued by a judge on 29 June 2018. The prosecution appealed the verdict and the decision was reversed before she was released. After a hunger strike and an international solidarity campaign she was released in January 2019 and on July of the same year she entered the parliament. In September 2019, a sentence over six years and 3 months was confirmed by the Supreme Court, but she was not arrested due to her parliamentary immunity. As an MP she supported the HDP mayors who were dismissed from their posts. Due to the statement "Raise your voice against war in Rojava" during the Turkish invasion of north eastern Syria she is investigated for terrorist propaganda since 2019. The

International Federation for Human Rights The International Federation for Human Rights (; FIDH) is a non-governmental federation for human rights organizations. Founded in 1922, FIDH is the third oldest international human rights organization worldwide after Anti-Slavery International ...

(FIDH) condemned her prosecution and demanded that the Turkish authorities comply with the human rights standards provided by the

United Nations The United Nations (UN) is the Earth, global intergovernmental organization established by the signing of the Charter of the United Nations, UN Charter on 26 June 1945 with the stated purpose of maintaining international peace and internationa ...

. On the 4 June 2020, she was dismissed from parliament together with fellow HDP politician Musa Farisoğulları and the journalist and

Republican People's Party The Republican People's Party (RPP; , CHP ) is a Kemalism, Kemalist and Social democracy, social democratic political party in Turkey. It is the oldest List of political parties in Turkey, political party in Turkey, founded by Mustafa Kemal ...

(CHP) politician Enis Berberoğlu and subsequently arrested due to her former conviction. On the 9 June she was released as two of her prison sentences were adapted in order to enable her release. On 21 December 2020, she was sentenced to over 22 years imprisonment on grounds that she encouraged the holding of and participated in manifestations and allegedly was a member of an illegal organization which supported Kurdish rebels. The next day she was arrested. On the 17 March 2021, the Turkish state prosecutor before the

Court of Cassation A court of cassation is a high-instance court that exists in some judicial systems. Courts of cassation do not re-examine the facts of a case; they only interpret the relevant law. In this, they are appellate courts of the highest instance. In ...

Bekir Şahin Bekir Şahin (born 1 March 1960, Mecitözü, Turkey) is a jurist, former judge and the current State Prosecutor of the Court of Cassation in Turkey. Education He was educated at the Imam Hatip school and studied law at the Dokuz Eylül Univer ...

filed a lawsuit before the

Constitutional Court A constitutional court is a high court that deals primarily with constitutional law. Its main authority is to rule on whether laws that are challenged are in fact unconstitutional, i.e. whether they conflict with constitutionally established ru ...

demanding for her and 866 other HDP politicians a five-year ban to engage in politics.

Hunger strike

While in detention, on 7 November 2018, Güven declared she was going on a hunger strike to protest the isolation of

Abdullah Öcalan Abdullah Öcalan ( ; ; born 4 April 1948 or 1949), also known as Apo (short for Abdullah in Turkish; Kurdish for "uncle"), is a founding member of the militant Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK). Öcalan was based in Syria from 1979 to 1998. He ...

, who was imprisoned on the island

İmralı İmralı is a small Turkish prison island in the south of the Sea of Marmara, west of the Armutlu- Bozburun peninsula within Bursa Province. It measures in the north–south direction with a width of , and has an area of . The highest peak ...

, who was a central figure in the Kurdish-Turkish peace process, About 250 political prisoners joined Güven with an indefinite hunger strike. During her hunger strike she only consumed Vitamin B and salty and sugary liquids. On 25 January 2019, after 79 days, Güven was released pending trial. After her release she declared she would continue her hunger strike as her aim was not her own release but that of Öcalan. On 4 February 2019 she was awarded an

Honorary Citizenship Honorary citizenship is a status bestowed by a city or other government on a foreign or native individual whom it considers to be especially admirable or otherwise worthy of the distinction. The honor usually is symbolic and does not confer an ...

of Paris. On 26 May 2019 she declared she would end her hunger strike due to the end of the isolation of Öcalan. On 10 July she took the oath necessary to take her seat in parliament.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Guven, Leyla 1964 births 21st-century mayors of places in Turkey People from Cihanbeyli Kurdish people of Central Anatolia Turkish Kurdish politicians Congress of the Council of Europe Living people Turkish human rights activists Turkish Kurdish women Women mayors of places in Turkey Democratic Society Party politicians Social Democratic People's Party (Turkey) politicians Turkish prisoners and detainees Members of the 25th Parliament of Turkey 21st-century Turkish women politicians Hunger strikers 21st-century Kurdish politicians Kurdish activists Kurdish women activists Turkish women MPs Kurdish women in politics 21st-century Kurdish women