Ali Haydar Kaytan

Ali Haydar Kaytan (born 1952[1]) also known as Fuad[2] is a co-founder of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) and a current member of the executive council of the Kurdistan Communities Union.

Biography

He was born into a Kurdish family whose members were resettled in the aftermath of the Dersim rebellion.[3] He was among the early members of a group around Abdullah Öcalan, Haki Karer, Mazlum Doğan and Cemîl Bayik which held regular ideological meetings from 1973 onwards and which would later become to be known as the "Kurdistan Revolutionaries".[4] In December 1974 he was shortly detained together with Öcalan and Kalkan, before the ADYÖD was closed down.[4] He was among the co-founders of the Kurdistan Workers' Party which was established in November 1978.[5] At the second party congress, which took place in Lebanon, the PKK decided to send him to Europe in order to raise support.[2] On the 22 July 1984 he took part in a decisive meeting in a PKK camp in the Lolan valley in Iraq where the decision was to begin with the insurgency.[6] Cemil Bayik and Duran Kalkan took also part in the meeting.[6] He returned to Germany where he was arrested in 1988[7] and during the Kurdish Trial in Düsseldorf, he was accused of being a member of a so-called revolutionary court in Barelias, Lebanon which sentenced two people to death.[8] During his arrest he entered into a hunger strike several times in protest of the pre-trial detention conditions.[7][9] He was sentenced to 7 years imprisonment on the 7 March 1994 for being a member of a terrorist organisation, but the murders were not taken into account. The judges though ruled that the murders fell under the a Lebanese amnesty which covered crimes which occurred during the Lebanese civil war.[10] He was released immediately due to his years in pretrial detention together with Duran Kalkan, who was also charged with being a member of a terrorist organization.[11] Afterwards he returned to Kurdistan and today he is a member of the co-presidency council of the Kurdistan Communities Union (KCK).[12]

Views

He has been close to Abdulla Öcalan and both speak amicably from each other. Haydar Kaytan is reported to have called Öcalan "is the crowned personality of the Eastern thought" and presented him like a natural leader for the Kurds, while Öcalan stated that Haydar Kaytan had a "strong ideological side and interpretation capability" during the interrogation following his arrest in February 1999.[13]

References
  1. Cetin, Umit; Jenkins, Celia; Aydin, Suavi (May 2020). Kurdish Studies, Special Issue: Alevi Kurds: History, Politics and Identity. 8. Transnational Press London. p. 83. ISBN 978-1-912997-48-0.
  2. Cigerli, Sabri; Saout, Didier Le (2005), pp.68–69
  3. Törne, Annika (5 November 2019). Dersim – Geographie der Erinnerungen: Eine Untersuchung von Narrativen über Verfolgung und Gewalt (in German). Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. p. 127. ISBN 978-3-11-062771-8.
  4. Jongerden, Joost; Akkaya, Ahmet Hamdi (2012-06-01). "The Kurdistan Workers Party and a New Left in Turkey: Analysis of the revolutionary movement in Turkey through the PKK's memorial text on Haki Karer". European Journal of Turkish Studies. Social Sciences on Contemporary Turkey (14). doi:10.4000/ejts.4613. ISSN 1773-0546.
  5. Cigerli, Sabri; Saout, Didier Le (2005). Ocalan et le PKK: Les mutations de la question kurde en Turquie et au moyen-orient (in French). Maisonneuve et Larose. pp. 47–48. ISBN 978-2-7068-1885-1.
  6. Cigerli, Sabri; Saout, Didier Le (2005), pp.72–73
  7. "Ali Haydar im Hungerstreik". docplayer. Politische Berichte. June 1989. p. 3.
  8. "Kurde angeklagt". Die Tageszeitung: taz (in German). 1989-01-25. p. 5. ISSN 0931-9085. Retrieved 2020-10-12.
  9. "Diese Anklage kann nicht zugelassen werden!" (PDF). docplayer. Politische Berichte. April 1989. Retrieved 12 October 2020.
  10. Stein, Gottfried (1994). Endkampf um Kurdistan?: die PKK, die Türkei und Deutschland (in German). Aktuell. p. 137. ISBN 3-87959-510-0.
  11. Jakobs, Walter (1994-03-09). "Ein solcher Prozeß darf sich nicht wiederholen". Die Tageszeitung: taz (in German). p. 5. ISSN 0931-9085. Retrieved 2020-10-12.
  12. "Kandil bids farewell to Journalist Deniz Fırat". www.diclehaber.com. Retrieved 2020-10-12.
  13. Çandar, Cengiz. Leaving the mountain': How may the PKK lay down arms? Freeing the Kurdish Question from violence (PDF). ETH Zürich. Tesev. p. 44. ISBN 978-605-5832-02-5. Retrieved 12 October 2020.
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