The International Women’s Solidarity Network has launched the Freedom for Figen Yüksekdağ campaign, advocating for the release of the former Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) co-chair and 108 other prisoners connected to the Kobane case.
Yüksekdağ has been serving a 32-year sentence in Kocaeli’s Kandira Type F Prison No. 1 since 2016 on charges of disrupting the unity and territorial integrity of the Turkish state.
In its statement launching the campaign, the network declared its opposition to the nearly 300-year cumulative sentence imposed on 13 Kurdish revolutionaries and politicians during the Kobane Trial, held at Ankara’s Sincan Prison on 16 May 2024. This campaign is focused on securing their freedom.
Describing the Kobane case as a revenge case, the network highlighted that the imprisonment of Yüksekdağ and other revolutionaries is rooted in the protests of 6-8 October 2016, in Turkey and Kurdistan.
The protests were sparked by an ISIS attack on the city of Kobane in northern Syria. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan notoriously stated, “Kobane will fall”. However, bolstered by international solidarity, the city repelled the attack.
The campaign’s goals
The campaign, set to continue through September and beyond, seeks to expose the unjust charges behind the Kobane Case. The campaign has already prepared brochures, social media content, and posters in various languages.
Appointments with women’s organisations, progressive politicians, parliamentarians, intellectuals, writers, artists, and academics across Europe are underway. The campaign urges concerted action to pressure the Turkish state into complying with the European Court of Human Rights rulings, to highlight Turkey’s lawlessness and human rights violations, and to send delegations to visit Yüksekdağ, other Kobane prisoners, and the HDP.
Call to expand the campaign
The statement called for solidarity from all women, women’s organisations, and allies worldwide, urging them to join the campaign and amplify its message across European cities. It emphasised the need to leverage available resources and tools to support the release of Yüksekdağ.
Figen Yüksekdağ (born in 1971) is a prominent women politician and former co-chair of the HDP. Initially active in student and women’s rights groups, she was elected HDP co-chair in 2014. She served as an MP from 2015-2018. Arrested in 2016 during the Kobane Trial, Yüksekdağ remains a symbol of women’s resistance against the Turkish state’s repression.
