Abdullah Demirbaş

Abdullah Demirbaş (born January 1, 1966 in Diyarbakır ) is a Kurdish local politician from Turkey.

Life

Demirbaş was born in the village of Yolçatı (kurd. Sosê) in Lice County and studied sociology at Fırat University in Elazığ . Because of his Kurdish origins, he twice escaped life-threatening clashes with Turkish right-wing extremists . After completing his studies in 1987, he worked as a philosophy teacher from 1987 to 2007. First he got a job in Yozgat , then in Sivas and finally in Altıntaş . His oldest daughter was born there in 1989. The registration office did not accept the first name Berfin because it was a Kurdish first name. Demirbaş, however, went to court and was ruled.

politics

Demirbaş was a union member. He was a founding member of several branches of the teachers union Eğitim Sen and a member of the disciplinary board of the umbrella union KESK . In 2001 Demirbaş worked in Diyarbakır , where he was chairman of the local branch of the teachers' union Eğitim-Sen. Due to his commitment to teaching the Kurdish language in his mother tongue, he was first transferred to a sentence and later dismissed from civil service. In the local elections in Turkey in 2004 , he was elected mayor of the historic center of Diyarbakır Sur for the Democracy Toplum Partisi . In 2007 Demirbaş was deposed from Danıştay . The reason was the use of Kurdish, Arabic, Armenian and Aramaic as official languages ​​in addition to Turkish.

In the local elections in Turkey in 2009 he was re-elected mayor of the successor party Barış ve Demokrasi Partisi with a better result. That same year, Abdullah Demirbaş was sentenced to 2.5 years in prison for an alleged propaganda offense. He had publicly stated that the tears of the mothers of soldiers and guerrilla fighters were the same, even if the hair color was different. Another prison sentence was received in 2009 for a memorial to Uğur Kaymaz . Demirbaş initially remained free until it became legally binding. During a large-scale operation against the PKK , the so-called "KCK-Operasyonu", pretrial detention was imposed. After five months in detention, Demirbaş was released for medical treatment. The treatment of this hereditary coagulation disorder would only have been possible in the USA, however, a travel ban was imposed as a condition. The travel ban was lifted in 2012.

On May 30, 2009, his 16-year-old son Baran announced that he would join the PKK. You can see where the democratic struggle is leading. In 2018 his son escaped from the PKK and turned himself in to the Turkish police . In 2014 Demirbaş returned to school. In August 2015, he was arrested again for alleged membership in a terrorist organization. As a result, Demirbaş lost his job. In October 2015, he was released from custody for incapacity. Various criminal proceedings were still pending in 2017. He was accused of participating in the funerals of PKK fighters, the proclamation of so-called "democratic autonomy" as part of his membership in the NGO Demokratie Toplum Kongresi and participating in the financing of the PKK. He is said to have acted as the PKK's financial courier on a trip to Marseille in 2013.

Demirbaş is married to Ziynet Demirbaş and has four children.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Milliyet daily newspaper from October 17, 2010
2. ↑ Sur eski Belediye Başkanı Demirbaş hakkında 22.5 yıl hapis istemi , Hürriyet of August 2, 2017