Kurdish politician Abdulmelîk Okyay (71) died on 12 September, the day he was supposed to be released from the Erzurum (Erzirom) prison in Turkey.
Okyay suffered a heart attack the morning he was due to be released. He was taken to a local hospital where medical intervention could not save his life. Okyay’s body was taken to Erzurum Forensic Medicine Institute.
DEM Party members, family and friends of Okyay gathered in front of the Forensic Medicine Institute after receiving the news. Okyay’s body will be buried in his hometown, the village of Kırıkhan (Qirikan), today.
Abdulmelik Okyay became involved in Kurdish political movements during his student days in the 1980s and dedicated his life to the struggle for the rights of the Kurdish people, working for many different Kurdish political parties. He started his political journey with the Labour Party (HEP), one of the political parties of the Kurdish freedom movement that developed in the 1990s. Okyay also served for a long time as People’s Democracy Party (HADEP) Erzurum provincial chairman and later continued his active politics as a member of the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), the predecessor of today’s DEM party.
Okyay was arrested and imprisoned several times in the 1990s, but he did not give up his struggle for the rights of the Kurdish people. He was repeatedly subjected to terror proceedings and was eventually imprisoned again.
