Kurdish politician Gültan Kışanak, in her ongoing defence in the high-profile Kobani case in Turkey, stressed the urgency of speaking out against what she described as the ‘conspiracy trial’ engineered by the Turkish government to suppress the political opposition and Kurdish identity.
Addressing the Turkish society, “If we remain silent today, there will be no ground to speak tomorrow. If we are silent about these conspiracy trials, we won’t be able to raise our voice against other conspiracies. Now is the time to be brave,” Kışanak urged.
Kışanak, former co-mayor of Diyarbakır (Amed) Metropolitan Municipality, highlighted that the charges against her, and the other defendants, are purely based on political activities, such as press releases and speeches, and not on any criminal actions.
She criticised the judiciary for being a tool in the hands of the government, aiming to suppress democratic politics, and noted the political nature of her own arrest and the larger implications for justice and democracy in Turkey.
She accused the judiciary of acting like a ‘police state’ rather than upholding the principles of a legal state, emphasising the lack of credible evidence in the case against her and others.
Kışanak called for respect for the Kurdish identity and urged the elimination of the root causes of these issues through democratic politics. She also condemned the Turkish government’s approach to the Kurdish issue, equating it with an oppressive regime and calling for a need to rebuild democracy in the country.