Abdülmelik Fırat

Abdülmelik Fırat (* 1934 in the province of Erzurum ; † September 28, 2009 ) was a Kurdish politician from Turkey .

He was a grandson of Sheikh Said , under whose leadership the Sheikh Said uprising broke out against the young Turkish government around Mustafa Kemal Ataturk . His father Sheikh Sahabettin was the nephew of Sheikh Said and his mother Ayşan Hanım was the daughter of Sheikh Said. After the suppression of the uprising, Abdulmelik's family was deported to western Turkey. In 1929 the family was able to return to their homeland after the state of emergency was lifted, but their property was expropriated. In 1935 the family was deported again. With the introduction of the multi-party system and the amendment of the settlement law ( iskan kanunu ) in 1947, the family was able to return to their homeland.

In 1957 he was elected a member of the Democratic Party of Erzurum Province. To do this, his age was changed up by seven years so that he could be elected. During the military coup in 1960 he was the youngest of the 500 accused in the Yassıada trials . The death penalty was imposed on him, but it was changed to prison. Of that he spent a year and a half in a prison in Kayseri .

In 1991 he was a member of the Right Way Party for Erzurum, but then resigned because of its Kurdish policy. He later founded the HAK-PAR (“Party for Law and Freedoms”), which advocates the autonomy of the Kurds in Turkey. He was its chairman for years. In addition to Kurdish and Turkish , Abdulmelik Fırat also spoke Arabic , Persian , English and French .

Abdulmelik Fırat died at the end of September 2009 of complications from multiple myeloma .

literature

• Ferzende Kaya: Mezopotamya Sürgünü - Abdülmelik Fırat'ın Yaşamöyküsü (biography), Alfa Verlag, Istanbul 2005, ISBN 9-752-97603-4 .