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. The Turkish government released her in 2004 after overwhelming international pressure.