Mehmet Selim Çürükkaya (born January 1, 1954), is a founding member and later dissident of the

Kurdistan Workers' Party The Kurdistan Workers' Party, or the PKK, isDespite the PKK's 12th Congress announcing plans for total organisational dissolution, the PKK has not yet been dissolved de facto or de jure. a Kurds, Kurdish militant political organization and armed ...

(PKK) and a

Kurdish Kurdish may refer to: *Kurds or Kurdish people *Kurdish language ** Northern Kurdish (Kurmanji) **Central Kurdish (Sorani) **Southern Kurdish ** Laki Kurdish *Kurdish alphabets *Kurdistan, the land of the Kurdish people which includes: **Southern ...

writer and

International PEN PEN International (known as International PEN until 2010) is a worldwide association of writers, founded in London in 1921 to promote friendship and intellectual co-operation among writers everywhere. The association has autonomous Internati ...

member. Çürükkaya lives in Germany and has published eight books, one translated into German and English.

Biography

Çürükkaya was born in 1954 in the village of Tanzut, in

Bingöl Province Bingöl Province (; ; ; ) is a province of Turkey. The province was known as Çapakçur Province () before 1945 when it was renamed as Bingöl Province. Its area is 8,003 km2, and its population is 282,556 (2022). The province encompasses 11 ...

. He attended primary school in the village and learned Turkish. After completing primary school, the village was renamed to İkizgöl. After primary school he went to live with an uncle in Ceyhan (in the Province of Adana), in order to visit the middle school. He stopped going to school and worked for a

coal merchant A coal merchant is the term used in the UK and other countries for a trader who sells coal and often delivers it to households. Coal merchants were once a major class of local business, but have declined in importance in many parts of the developed ...

and in cafes. In the early 1970s he moved back to Bingol to finish high school. The village was temporarily destroyed by a landslide and elsewhere, 17 km from Bingöl, under the name Yeniköy been rebuilt. In 1974 Çürükkaya joined the PKK and in the following year, while a student at Tunceli Teachers School, travelled around southeast Turkey recruiting members. He was sentenced in May 1980 by a military court in

Diyarbakır Diyarbakır is the largest Kurdish-majority city in Turkey. It is the administrative center of Diyarbakır Province. Situated around a high plateau by the banks of the Tigris river on which stands the historic Diyarbakır Fortress, it is ...

to a long prison sentence. In his books he tells of torture and resistance. According to Daniel, he participated in several hunger strikes. His wife Aysel was placed in the same prison. In April 1991 he was released. He left Turkey and went to Mahsum-Korkmaz Academy in the Lebanese Bekaa Valley. He held various functions in the PKK, including as chief financial executive. Çürükkaya fell out with

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 ...

because of his leadership style and the persecution and murder of intra-party critics. Çürükkaya was arrested on the orders of Ocalan and sentenced to death. He escaped from prison, came to Germany and had to hide from the organization. In Germany,

Günter Wallraff Günter Wallraff (born 1 October 1942) is a German writer and undercover journalist. Life Günther Wallraff was born in Burscheid as the son of a Ford worker and a factory owner's daughter. After attending high school, he trained as bookselle ...

sat for him and visited Öcalan in Syrian exile, to effect a pardon Çürükkayas. In his book on

, Selim claimed that Öcalan was also raping girls, and that he was acting like a sex- and murder machine among young (Kurdish) girls. Çürükkaya is married to fellow activist Aysel Çürükkaya, with whom he has a daughter.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Curukkaya, Selim 1954 births Living people People from Genç, Bingöl Kurdish writers Turkish-language writers Turkish people of Kurdish descent Members of the Kurdistan Workers' Party