In May this year, the long-running “Kobanê trial”, in which the Turkish state prosecuted 108 Kurdish politicians and activists on trumped up charges, came to a close with long jail terms imposed on the defendants. The prosecutions arose from mass protests that broke out in southeastern Turkey in 2014, in solidarity with the border town of Kobanê, which was besieged by Islamic State (ISIS).
The longest jail sentences were handed out to the then co-chairs of the left-wing Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), Selahattin Demirtaş (42 years imprisnment) and Figen Yüksekdağ (32 years and 9 months imprisonment). Both have been jailed since 2016.
Yüksekdağ was convicted of a string of “offences”, including “incitement” through the press, “participating in illegal meetings and demonstrations”, “making propaganda for a terrorist organisation" and for “violating election bans”.
While Demirtaş is relatively well-known, Yüksekdağ is less known internationally. A new global campaign called “Initiative for Figen Yüksekdağ — Free Kobanê Case Prisoners” has been launched.
Yüksekdağ was born in 1971, in Adana-Ceyhan, in Turkey's south. She was introduced to socialist ideas during her school years and her early political activism soon led her into conflict with the Turkish state and arrests.
As a high school student, she was involved in various student associations advocating for democratic and social rights, including the High School Students' Association (LÖB), the Working High School Students' Association, and the Association of Democratic High School Students.
During her university years, Yüksekdağ founded student unions and later worked as a journalist for various socialist publications such as the youth magazine Özgür Gençlik and the weekly newspaper Atılım.
Her commitment to women's rights was evident in her role as editor of the magazine Sosyalist Kadın (Socialist Woman).
In 2002, she became the spokesperson for the Socialist Platform of the Oppressed.
After serving a one-year prison sentence for her activism in 2006, she continued her work and helped found the Working Women's Association.
Her participation in the funeral of the socialist intellectual Kutsiye Bozoklar in 2009 led to another arrest.
In 2010, she played a key role in founding the Socialist Party of the Oppressed (ESP) and became its chairperson. Amidst a period of global political upheaval, including the Arab uprisings and the Gezi Park uprising in Turkey in 2013, as well as growing social protests against the global economic crisis, she participated in the founding of the Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP), which regrouped several leftist and pro-Kurdish rights groups.
In June 2014, she was elected as co-chair of the HDP alongside Demirtaş.
As an HDP member of parliament for the Kurdish region of Van from 2015 to 2018, Yüksekdağ faced constant attacks and repression from the Turkish state, which saw her position and the grassroots activism of the HDP as a threat.
On November 4, 2016, she was arrested along with other leading HDP representatives as part of the so-called Kobanê trial.
The Initiative for Figen Yüksekdağ explains that the Kobanê conspiracy case was “a comprehensive attack by the Turkish state against all social opposition in general and against the HDP in particular, which defends the free and equal life of the peoples of Turkey together in democratic politics”.
The HDP won 13% of the vote and 80 seats in the 2015 elections, forcing Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s right-wing and virulently anti-Kurdish Justice and Development Party (AKP) into a coalition government with other right-wing parties. This ended the AKP's one-party rule.
“Dictator Erdoğan, who could not digest this, started an ongoing and comprehensive attack against HDP. Thousands of HDP members were arrested, HDP buildings were arsonised and shot. Dozens of HDP members were murdered.
“When he could not stop the political activities of HDP with all these, he arrested its co-chairs and executives on 4 November 2016. Hundreds of HDP members were banned from politics...
“Political trials such as the Kobanê Trial and the Gezi Trial, which have no legal basis, aim to extinguish the hopes of the society for freedom. We cannot accept this and remain a bystander.”
Yüksekdağ has continued her resistance in prison.
Her poetry collection The Walls Will Collapse, written in prison, was banned and confiscated.
Yüksekdağ remains a symbolic figure in the fight for women's freedom, the self-determination of peoples, and against exploitation and oppression, both inside and outside the prison walls.