Politics

Kurdish feminist sentenced to 30 years jail in Turkey

Gökkan was sentenced by the Diyarbakır 9th High Criminal Court for her alleged support of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK).

Wladimir van Wilgenburg 2021/10/20 14:10

Ayşe Gökkan, a former mayor of Nusaybin, and spokesperson of the Free Women’s Movement (TJA). (Photo: Mezopotamya news agency)

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ERBIL (Kurdistan 24) – Ayşe Gökkan, a former mayor of Nusaybin, and spokesperson of the Free Women’s Movement (TJA) was sentenced to 30 years in jail on Wednesday, the Mezopotamya news agency reported.

Gökkan was sentenced by the Diyarbakır 9th High Criminal Court for her alleged support of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK). She was charged on the allegation of being a “leader of a terrorist organization" and "membership in a terrorist organization.”

The PKK has been fighting a decades-long insurgency with Ankara over Kurdish rights in Turkey.

According to her biography, published on Open Democracy, Gökkan became famous after protesting the building of a wall by Turkey on the border with northeast Syria during the war in that country.

The provincial branch of the pro-Kurdish Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) in Amed (Diyarbakir) called the court decision a blow to the “women’s struggle.”