Saime Aşkın

Saime Aşkın (born January 1, 1961 in Tunceli ; died in Iraq in 1984 or 1985 ) was a leading member of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) and was shot on orders from Öcalan. In the PKK she used the code name Delal.

Saime Aşkın was a teacher in Urfa and joined the organization in 1976. She was a member of the Gaziantep Area Committee and was actively involved in formulating the first manifesto of the Kürdistan Devriminin Yolu Party. After the military coup in Turkey in 1980 , Aşkın went to Lebanon. There she became a member of the Central Committee of the PKK. She worked in Germany and, because of her willingness to discuss, came into opposition to Abdullah Öcalan , whose one-man rule she rejected. In 1983 Aşkın was summoned to Damascus by Öcalan. Here she stood up for Çetin Güngör (alias Semir) and stood against Öcalan. He sent Aşkın to Camp Lolan in Iraq, where she was arrested by Duran Kalkan and Ali Haydar Kaytan and executed in late 1984 or in the first half of 1985. According to the PKK dissident Selim Çürükkaya , when she was executed she shouted the following to a PKK official who wanted to turn away: “Don't go, coward. Come and check it out! Look at the courage of revolutionaries. ”When she was executed, she shouted:“ Long live the PKK of Hayri, Mazlum and Kemal. Down with the cowardly APOists. You will end up in fascism. ”In the grounds for the verdict against Öcalan, the judge wrote about the reasons for her execution that Saime Aşkın had been declared a traitor by the PKK and was therefore executed.

family

Saime Aşkın had two younger brothers and two sisters. Her brother Ümit Aşkın was originally a TİKKO activist , but allowed himself to be persuaded to join the PKK. After Saime's execution, he left the organization and lived in Germany. Saime Aşkın's brother Cemal was killed in 1980 in an attack by Turkish leftists in Dersim .

Rating in the PKK

In the PKK today, Aşkın is venerated as a martyr and a pioneer. Abdullah Öcalan described their case in his book Bir Halkı Savunmak :

There was also Saime Aşkın. She was a teacher in Urfa and one of the first to join us. She was ready to sacrifice. And went outside [to fight]. I was amazed to learn that they had been sentenced to death in the camp under Duran and Ali Haydar . What they said was something like, “She's messing up all military discipline. She lets everything come to nothing. So it was inevitable that she would be punished. ”I was forced to trust him. That was a requirement of discipline. The event held a special place in my heart. In my opinion, there was no one that could be eliminated in this way. But I couldn't do anything.

Individual evidence

1. ^ Aliza Marcus: Blood and belief - The PKK and the Kurdish fight for independence. New York University Press, New York / London 2007, p. 95
2. ↑ Selim Cürükkaya: PKK - The dictatorship of Abdullah Öcalan. Frankfurt am Main 1997, pp. 144f.
3. ^ Abdullah Öcalan: Bir Halkı Savunmak. o. O. 2004, p. 435