Politics, Gender, and Genre--The Kurds and 'The West': Writings from Prison by Leyla Zana

Leyla Zana, the first female Kurdish parliamentarian in Turkey, was imprisoned in 1994 after having tried to call attention to the predicament of the Kurdish minority in Turkey for many years. In her memoirs Writings from Prison, she relates that, when she took the oath of office in Parliament, she added her own words in Turkish and Kurdish, "I will work for the fraternal existence of the Turkish and Kurdish people within the context of democracy." This was the first time a person spoke Kurdish in the Turkish Parliament. Zana had several years of political activity behind her before she was elected to Parliament. She had worked for a human rights association group in Diyarbakir (considered the Kurdish capital), and also as a correspondent to a leftist Kurdish newspaper. In 1988, she was arrested and severely tortured for her political engagement. Writings from Prison can be read as counter-discursive, written to oppose a violent Turkish nationalist discourse that denies Kurdish parties any participation in Turkish politics. Zana's persistent attempts to establish a Kurdish voice in Turkey is contributing to a process of equality establishing itself through a Kurdish discourse.

Published in England, Writings from Prison is a political/polemic textthat calls for the "right type" of western involvement in the Middle East, and in particular Turkey. It both criticizes western military and economic interests in Turkey and praises emancipatory qualities of western democracies. Around the time Zana's publication appeared, Turkey applied for membership in the European Union (EU), a membership that has been contested partly because of human rights' violations against the Kurdish population in Turkey, the largest minority in Turkey and one denied any recognition. (The Kemalist structure of the Turkish constitutional system defines the citizens of Turkey as "Turkish" without consideration to ethnic identity. As a result, Turkey has constitutionally negated both the existence and the protection of ethnic minorities since 1923.)

Writings from Prison is also a heroine's story that serves to empower women readers in their emancipation from oppressive structures. The book is a product of a collaboration between Leyla Zana, who remains imprisoned, and several European activists, most of whom are women. The book was published with the help of Amnesty International and The Kurdish Institutes of Washington and Paris. As literature, this book contributes not only to the genre of female prison literature but also to a literature of the Kurdish diaspora, creating bonds of translocal solidarity and operating in several languages through several translations. It educates the western reader on the Kurdish question in Turkey and the devastating effects that state-induced hatred has had on Kurdish communities. It is clear that Zana carefully balances her different positions vis-à-vis Turkish politics, the Kurdish population, Kurdish women, women in general, and a western audience, and that her politics toward the West is a clear strategic balancing act between these different positions.

The Turkish state in Writings from Prison is a relentless oppressor, an implacable patriarchy that brutally suppresses any voice that dares to diverge from the dominant discourse. Zana testifies to the double burden of being a Kurdish woman in Turkish society, she even refers to it as a kind of "martyrdom." ¹ Her outsider status both as a woman and as Kurd gives explosive effect to her action as a political subject within Turkish politics. As she calls for a re-signification of the relationship between Turkishness and Kurdishness, she introduces a denied identity into the discussion for which she is severely punished. The explosive effect of her appearance in Parliament testifies to the fragile state of democracy in Turkey, especially the absence of democratic dialogue between different political actors.

Zana's feminist cause (she calls herself a feminist) disappears into the Kurdish cause, and is seen in a complex and intimate relation to the question of the Turkish/Kurdish...