lit a candle 8 Sept 2026A tailor who stitched together a whole city's dignity. That's a life.
Their story
Mehdi Zana was born Mehdi Bilici on 20 December 1940 in Silvan, also called Farqin, in Diyarbakir Province, Turkey. He later took the Kurdish surname Zana, meaning wise, in place of the Turkish-assigned Bilici. English and Kurdish notices also write the given name as Mehdi or Mehdî Zana. He attended…
Mehdi Zana was born Mehdi Bilici on 20 December 1940 in Silvan, also called Farqin, in Diyarbakir Province, Turkey. He later took the Kurdish surname Zana, meaning wise, in place of the Turkish-assigned Bilici. English and Kurdish notices also write the given name as Mehdi or Mehdî Zana. He attended local elementary school but did not finish high school. As a young man he worked as a tailor in a shop owned by the Kurdish intellectual Niyazi Tatlici. Activists later remembered that workshop as a kind of informal political university, a place where left ideas and Kurdish identity were argued as well as sewn.
In 1963 he joined the Workers Party of Turkey (TIP). Within two years he headed its Silvan branch. He supported a local theatre company meant to draw interest to socialism and Kurdish identity, took part in the Eastern Meetings (Dogu mitingleri), and was involved with the Revolutionary Cultural Eastern Hearths (DDKO). In the late 1960s he was detained for about a year. He was imprisoned again between 1971 and 1974, after the 1971 military intervention, and released under the 1974 amnesty. He also travelled to Syria and Iran to widen Kurdish political contacts. BBC Turkish notes that he helped found the Socialist Party of Turkish Kurdistan (TKSP) with Kemal Burkay in the 1970s. In 1969 he stood unsuccessfully as the TIP parliamentary candidate for Diyarbakir.
In August 1977 he announced an independent candidacy for mayor of Diyarbakir. He campaigned often in Kurdish, framed a Kurdish we against a Turkish them, and won tribal support including from the Omeyran and Botan. In the December 1977 local elections he became the first independent socialist mayor of Diyarbakir, defeating Yahya Mehmetoglu, who had TIP and DDKO backing. As mayor he encouraged Kurdish in the city council and the municipality, and he sought a transnational aid network. In 1979, after Ankara blocked purchases abroad, socialist-run French cities sent buses and municipal vehicles. The Institut Kurde de Paris recounts solidarity from Clermont-Ferrand, Grenoble, Nantes and Rennes. The experiment was short. It lasted until the coup of 12 September 1980.
The 12 September 1980 military coup ended his mayoralty. He was arrested soon afterward. Excerpts of Prison No. 5 cited by the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada date that arrest to 24 September 1980. He spent more than a decade in prison, much of it in Diyarbakir Military Prison, known as Prison No. 5, with transfers including Aydin, Afyonkarahisar and Eskisehir. Amnesty International adopted him as a prisoner of conscience. He insisted on defending himself in Kurdish in court. In 1986 the International Federation for Human Rights dedicated its Paris congress to his case. He later wrote that, because of torture, cold, and immobility, he reached a point where he could no longer move any part of his body, and that the only times his hands were untied were the hours during which he was being tortured. Nokta quoted related passages in 1991 from Wait Diyarbakir, also known as Bekle Diyarbakir and Wait for Me, Diyarbakir. From 1987 the regime became less severe and he was allowed writing paper. He kept a journal and tried to remember what had been endured. Those pages became the memoirs.
Released in April 1991, he had been held for ten years and eight months in that continuous stretch, under conditions he said Europeans would find hard to imagine. He told readers the imprisonment followed positions he had taken for Kurdish rights. Bianet and the Institut Kurde put his lifetime prison time at about sixteen years, across more than one period. After release he sought medical treatment in France until February 1992, then faced further sentences. On 3 December 1992 he testified to the European Parliament Human Rights Sub-Committee. He said that, like other Kurds sentenced for the crime of separatism, he had been stripped of political rights for life, that he continued to campaign peacefully for recognition of the rights of the 15 million Kurds living in Turkey, and that he was not a member of any party or movement. After that testimony he was imprisoned again in 1994 and 1995 under Turkey's Anti-Terror Law, for speech treated as separatist propaganda. Amnesty documented the 1994 sentence.
He did not win the Sakharov Prize. In 1995 the European Parliament awarded it to his wife, Leyla Zana, while she was imprisoned. On 17 January 1996, in Brussels, Mehdi Zana collected the prize on her behalf. A European Parliament photograph of that ceremony, husband standing in for an imprisoned wife, is the portrait on this page. He is not Leyla Zana. Leyla Zana is living. She is a Kurdish politician and former member of parliament, and this profile does not merge her career into his.
After the 1996 release he spent years in European exile, first in Paris, then notably in Sweden and Germany, writing and campaigning. Institut Kurde notes that siblings helped care for him in Swedish exile. English obituaries surveyed here do not name those siblings, or his parents, and those names are not invented. He returned to Turkey in 2004 and lived more quietly in Diyarbakir thereafter. BBC Turkish describes that return as a step back from active politics. His books include Prison No. 5: Eleven Years in Turkish Jails, written with Andre Vauquelin, English edition 1997, with a preface by Elie Wiesel; Wait Diyarbakir, with a later English edition among 2013 bibliography entries; Sevgili Leyla; Parastina min; Ay daye; and Postal darbeleriyle uyanmak. Kudret Gunes's 2005 documentary Mehdi Zana, voir la vie autrement portrayed the exile years. Prison No. 5 remains a standard English-language testimony of Diyarbakir Prison.
In 1975 he married his cousin Leyla Zana, born 1961, then fourteen, in a match arranged under traditional family pressure she later described critically. They had two children: son Ronay, born 1976, and daughter Ruken, born 1981. Prison and exile repeatedly separated the family. After Leyla's 1994 arrest the children spent time in European refuge. Both children have largely kept private lives away from politics. Sources on Ruken note a later marriage to Fidel Mirhan and a son, Rubin Zana, reported in 2014. No further children are named in the sources used here, and none are added.
Mehdi Zana died on 29 August 2026 in Diyarbakir, at age 85, while receiving intensive care in hospital for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD, also called KOAH in Turkish reports). Bianet, BBC Turkish, T24, Rudaw and soL reported that cause. No further medical detail is added. On 30 August a ceremony was held before Diyarbakir Metropolitan Municipality, funeral prayers at Ulucamii (Ulu Cami), and burial at Yenikoy Cemetery (Yenikoy Mezarligi). DEM Party, Kurdistan Regional Government President Nechirvan Barzani, Diyarbakir co-mayor Serra Bucak, and many others paid tribute. Rudaw reported phone condolences to Leyla Zana from President Erdogan and MHP leader Bahceli. Leyla Zana, living, said he would have wanted a funeral of that scale, and on 4 September 2026 she published thanks for the solidarity, as reported by Amed TV. Serra Bucak said the legacy he left is not merely a memory of the past, but a living value that guides the city's present and future. This page is only Mehdi Zana, the Kurdish politician, author, and former mayor of Diyarbakir, born Mehdi Bilici, who died in 2026.
Biography adapted from EN Wikipedia; Bianet; BBC Turkish; Institut Kurde; T24; Rudaw; soL; Amnesty EUR 44/45/94; Canadian IRB..
In their own words
“I was imprisoned for ten years and eight months, under conditions that Europeans would find hard to imagine. ... My imprisonment was due to my having repeatedly taken positions in favor of ... the rights of Kurds.”
Mehdi Zana, opening of his prison testimony in Prison No. 5: Eleven Years in Turkish Jails (1997), as quoted via a Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada research compilation. Ellipses are in the excerpt, not added here.
“Starting in 1987, the regime became less severe. I was allowed writing paper. I kept a journal and tried to remember everything that we had endured.”
Mehdi Zana on how the memoirs were assembled. Prison No. 5, via the same Canadian IRB excerpt.
“Due to torture, cold, and immobility, I reached a point where I could no longer move any part of my body. The only times my hands were untied were the hours during which I was being tortured. And torture had no set time, nor any defined duration.”
Mehdi Zana, Diyarbakir Prison testimony later quoted by Nokta (1991) from Wait Diyarbakir (Bekle Diyarbakir). Source: Kurdish Center for Studies summary of the Nokta quotations.
“Like all Kurds sentenced for the 'crime of separatism' I have been stripped of my political rights for life ... while I continue to campaign peacefully for the recognition of the rights of the 15 million Kurds living in Turkey, I am not a member of any party or movement.”
Mehdi Zana, statement to the European Parliament Human Rights Sub-Committee, 3 December 1992. Source: Amnesty International EUR 44/45/94. Ellipsis is in the printed excerpt.
“The legacy left by Mehdi Zana is not merely a memory belonging to the past, but a living value that guides our present and our future.”
Serra Bucak, Diyarbakir co-mayor, at the funeral, as reported by Bianet. These are her words, not his.
Photos
1Mehdi Zana at the European Parliament on 17 January 1996, receiving the 1995 Sakharov Prize on behalf of his imprisoned wife Leyla Zana. Cropped ceremony portrait of him, not Leyla Zana alone.
Jan 1996 · by People Forever
Exactly. No speeches, just the work.