Learning Turkish with them as they were schooled, she also found her political voice - and went on to become, in 1991, the first Kurdish woman elected to the Turkish Parliament. Married at 14 to Mehdi Zana, a political Kurd some 20 years her senior who became mayor of Diyarbakir and spent 16 years in jail after the 1980 military coup, she found herself the single mother of two children. Generally reluctant to speak to journalists, Leyla Zana has come by caution the hard way but has lost none of her determination to fight for the rights of Kurds, and of women.īorn in the province of Diyarbakir in southeast Turkey in 1961, she dropped out of elementary school because she could not understand the language of instruction - Turkish - and was forbidden to speak her own. Arriving at a cafe in a crowded shopping mall, she sits only after her brother has checked out the locale. ANKARA - At 51, she is petite yet powerful.
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