Prisoner of conscience, Mehmet Ali Yaşa, died in hospice care in Finland
Prisoner of conscience, Mehmet Ali Yaşa, died in hospice care in Finland
Mehmet Ali Yaşa, a cancer patient released two months before serving his 30-year sentence, died in Finland, where he had travelled for further treatment and to be with his family.
Mehmet Ali Yaşa, 61, who was released 74 days before the end of his 30-year (originally 36-year) life sentence in a T-type closed prison in the Turkish city of Malatya, died in hospice care in Finland.1
Yaşa’s, who had advanced lung and brain cancer, lawyer requested a postponement of the execution of the sentence from the Office of the Chief Prosecutor, and it was decided to postpone his further imprisonment for six months.
Yaşa was temporarily released on February 16, 2024, so that he could seek treatment. Yaşa, who was being treated at the Malatya Training and Research Hospital, died in Finland, where he had traveled for further treatment and to meet his family.
In Finland, his illness was found to be fatal, and he was transferred to a hospice. There, he passed away peacefully in his sleep, surrounded by loved ones.
The revolutionary Kurdish teacher was a "danger" to the Turkish government
In 1994 in Turkey, Mehmet Ali Yaşa was severely accused and quickly brought to trial without the possibility of appealing the sentence. He was initially sentenced to 36 years for his opinions. Yaşa was used as a "cautionary example" for other highly educated, public speaking individuals of Kurdish background in 1990s Turkey.
His high sentence was based on trumped-up charges of being a "member of an illegal organization", but in reality it was about his opinions, his popularity among the Kurdish population and his writings.
He already had a very bad relationship with the Turkish police, who had been brought to his Kurdish-majority hometown to control and subjugate Kurds from Turkish-majority cities.
When Yaşa was arrested in Diyarbakır, Turkey, in 1994, he was immediately taken to a state "security court" where he was sentenced, without a proper lawyer, to life imprisonment (36 years) without appeal on the charge of "disrupting the unity and integrity of the state".2
After the 1980 military coup, the Kurdish language was officially banned in both public and private life in Turkey. The government officially banned the words "Kurds", "Kurdistan" and "Kurd". Many people were arrested and imprisoned if they spoke, published or sang in Kurdish.
Yaşa did not stop speaking his own mother tongue, but even taught it to his Kurdish students as a high school teacher, despite warnings from the police in the early 90s. He taught his native language to the children of his hometown, who the government of that time tried to "Turkify", i.e. make them forget their Kurdish background.
Yaşa's own mother didn't even know Turkish, and her mother tongue was criminalized at the time. You could no longer speak your own language. Could no longer speak at all.
Although Yaşa never touched a gun outside of official military service in Turkey and did not belong to the illegal Kurdish *PKK movement (although he sympathized), he was sentenced to an absurd 36 years. This happened because he was proudly Kurdish and refused to listen to the oppressive Turkish authorities, even when he was warned.
The authorities wanted to destroy his language, culture, history and people.
His sentence was later reduced to "only" 30 years after some Turkish laws changed in the early 2000s during the EU membership aspirations. EU member states must not have political and prisoners of conscience. Turkey never joined the EU.
*In 2019, the Kurdish democratic PKK / YPG and its sister organization SDF People's Defense Forces, assisted the US in defeating the Islamic terrorist organization ISIS from Syria and Iraq - despite complaints from Turkey. After doing an excellent job against terrorism, as well as establishing direct democratic regions that respect women's rights instead of the oppressive Islamic caliphate, the USA, Trump, decided to hand Kurds over to the 'NATO ally' Islamist Turkey - and the Kurds were betrayed yet again.
Yaşa dramatizes the events of Roboski, the Kurdish massacre, and presents it to the readers in an emotional way. While describing the carnage in the language of theater, he also opens up the sociological structure of Roboski's Kurds to the readers.
The Roboski incident (Komkujiya Roboskî in Kurdish), also known as the Uludere airstrike, took place on December 28, 2011 in Ortasu, in the Uludere village near the Turkey-Iraq border. The Turkish Air Force bombed a group of Kurdish civilians allegedly involved in "gasoline and cigarette smuggling".
In the incident, 34 people were killed by fighter jets. The Turkish government tried to silence the events and also accused Yaşa of writing about the events in Kurdish.3
Tens of thousands of Finns read about Mehmet Ali Yaşa's life in X for several weeks, when he had time to live in Finland with his family, who are Finnish citizens.
His story and the abuses that happened to him had time to become known to tens of thousands of sympathetic Finns who welcomed him to the country, who also sent mass condolences to his loved ones after hearing about his death.4
Em kurên Mezopotamya yên Amedê ne. Em neviyên Gilgamêş in.
Serê we sax be bavê min.
Rest in peace, warrior.
Mehmet Ali Yaşa
-1963-2024-
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