The Kurdish political activist Kenan Ayaz is currently on trial in Germany for alleged Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) membership. As the final court judgement is expected in the coming weeks, Ayaz read out his closing statement at his trial in Hamburg on 17 July. The reading of the closing statement was accompanied by many interruptions by the judge.
The court process has become an ordeal for Ayaz, as he was first arrested in Cyprus in 2023 and extradited to Germany in June 2023, despite having started a hunger strike in May to protest his extradition. His extradition to Germany came after a decade of political asylum in Cyprus. He has since been imprisoned in Germany for more than a year under harsh conditions. His trial for alleged PKK membership began in November 2023.
Kenan Ayaz began his closing statement by giving an overview of the history of the Kurdish people, showing the centuries of oppression on the one side and the ongoing resistance against this oppression on the other. Highlighting the collective pain of the Kurdish people, he mentioned the Zîlan and the Dersim massacre. “There is nothing that has not been done to the Kurds, they drown in the sea like Alan Kurdî, they freeze to death at the [European] borders in winter, mothers wait for their children in front of prisons and morgues”, he added.
He continued by criticising the court for “not putting the perpetrators, but those who rebel against it” on trial, saying that the “resistance of the Kurdish people against the genocidal attacks of the Turkish state is legitimate self-defence, not terrorism”. He emphasised that “the struggle for freedom and existence is not terrorism”.
Ayaz also called Turkey’s president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan “the biggest terrorist of the 21st century”, stating that Erdoğan and the Islamic State (ISIS) “have turned the Middle East into a blood bath”. Erdoğan had “murdered children, sent mothers the bones of their children in the post and has sent these mothers to court when they complained”, he added. He concluded by saying that instead of him, Erdoğan should be on trial.
He also pointed out that he thinks that it is nonsensical to try to resolve conflicts by military means. “It is possible to prevent wars and political enmities that cause great suffering and destruction and to solve problems without bloodshed if you have a developed right,” said Ayaz. He criticised the court of regarding the injustices against the Kurdish people only as limited human rights violations, saying that the Kurdish people are “excluded from the law as a people and cultural entity”.
He made an appeal to the court in Hamburg and the European Union to recognise the “Kurdish question as the main problem in Turkey” and to solve it according to the European Convention of Human Rights.
Kenan Ayaz is one of 12 Kurdish political activists currently imprisoned in Germany. On 24 July, a court case against the Kurdish journalist Serdar Karakoç will take place in Amsterdam (Netherlands), where a decision will be made on his possible extradition to Germany, where he is accused of being a member of the PKK.
