JINHA

ANKARA – Aysel Doğan, the Kurdish politician and peace activist diagnosed with cancer while in jail, was released yesterday.

Aysel, diagnosed with cancer while in jail, started chemotherapy treatments yesterday. Aysel Doğan, who has spent 17 years of her life in prison, returned from exile in Europe to her native Turkey in 1999 when PKK (Kurdistan Workers' Party) Leader Abdullah Öcalan called for a Peace Group to come to the country.

The Supreme Court 16th Department Head Eyüp Yeşil released the peace activist based on her health problems, long time in detention and the certainty that she will not flee. Aysel was transferred yesterday from the prisoners' ward of the hospital where she is undergoing chemotherapy to the normal word.

Aysel was recently diagnosed with the third stage of ovarian cancer, which advances in four stages. The peace envoy, jailed in Diyarbakır E Type prison, had a history of serious health problems before the diagnosis. After a long delay by prison officials, she was finally referred to the Oncology Unit of Ankara Zekai Tahir Burak Women’s Health Training and Research Hospital in late April. Kurdish civil society members started a campaign for her release from jail.

Who is Aysel Doğan?

Doğan was arrested during the KCK operations of 2009, in which the AKP government targeted thousands of Kurdish politicians and civil society activists. Aysel is one of the few persons still imprisoned within the scope of the KCK trials; most were released.

Doğan has spent 17 years in prisons in Turkey at different times. She was first arrested during the military coup in 1980 after she graduated from Gazi University in Ankara. She became an independent candidate from Dersim in 1991 after she was released from prison years later. She received a majority of the votes in Dersim, but the state refused to give her the seat based on election laws. Aysel, facing repression and threats in the wake of the election, fled to Germany.

The activist took part in the second Peace Group that came from Europe to Turkey on the call of Abdullah Öcalan in 1999. Turkish forces arrested her on her return to Turkey and sentenced her to ten years in prison, until 2009. She moved to her hometown of Dersim upon her release and founded the Dersim Alevi Faith and Culture Academy to promote the repressed Alevi religion and culture.

During the KCK operations, the Turkish state swept up Aysel because of her work in Dersim on 28 September 2011, sentencing her to 18 years of prison. She took part in the second group holding a hunger strike that was started by the PKK and PJAK prisoners in Autumn 2012, demanding an end to the isolation conditions of the Kurdish leader Abdullah Öcalan.

In 2014, the Supreme Court ordered a retrial for Aysel due to a change in the law, but she was not released, despite a verdict by the court that she was tried unjustly.

(nt/cm)