Leyla Zana | Leyla Zana is a Kurdish rights and democracy activist who spent over ten years in Turkish prisons for her outspoken advocacy. Zana was inspired to become a prominent voice for human rights due to the imprisonment and torture of her husband for his own political activism. In 1991, she became the first Kurdish female elected to parliament. In 1994, she was arrested and sentenced to 15 years in prison for speaking Kurdish on the parliamentary floor and for her alleged ties to the militant Kurdish Workers’ Party. While in jail, she published Writings from Prison detailing her cause and the hardship she faced in the name of freedom. After overwhelming international pressure, the Turkish government was forced to revisit her case, which resulted in her release in 2004. She received the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought in 1995 and was twice nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. She remains active in the fight for democracy, Kurdish rights, and women’s emancipation in Turkey.
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