Ali Haydar Kaytan (born 26 March 1952, in Nazımiye, Tunceli, Turkey) also known as Fuad[1] is a co-founder of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) and a member of the executive council of the Kurdistan Communities Union.

Biography

Kaytan was born in 1952 into a Kurdish family whose members were resettled in the aftermath of the Dersim rebellion.[2][3] He was among the early members of a group along with Abdullah Öcalan, Haki Karer, Mazlum Doğan and Cemîl Bayik which held regular ideological meetings from 1973 onwards and which would later become 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 sent him to Europe in order to raise support.[1] On 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 also took 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] While he was in prison he entered into a hunger strike several times in protest of the pre-trial detention conditions.[7][9] He was sentenced to seven years imprisonment on 7 March 1994 for being a member of a terrorist organisation, but the murders were not taken into account. The judges ruled that the murders fell under a Lebanese amnesty which covered crimes which occurred during the Lebanese civil war.[10] He was released immediately due to his years in pre-trial detention together with Duran Kalkan, who was also charged with being a member of a terrorist organization.[11] He then returned to Kurdistan and became a member of the co-presidency council of the Kurdistan Communities Union (KCK).[12]

Views

He was close to Abdullah Öcalan, Kaytan is reported to have called Öcalan "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. 1 2 Cigerli, Sabri; Saout, Didier Le (2005), pp.68–69
  2. ↑ 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.
  3. ↑ Cetin, Umit; Jenkins, Celia; Aydin, Suavi (May 2020). Kurdish Studies, Special Issue: Alevi Kurds: History, Politics and Identity. Vol. 8. Transnational Press London. p. 83. ISBN 978-1-912997-48-0.
  4. 1 2 Jongerden, Joost; Akkaya, Ahmet Hamdi (1 June 2012). "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. 1 2 Cigerli, Sabri; Saout, Didier Le (2005), pp.72–73
  7. 1 2 "Ali Haydar im Hungerstreik". docplayer. Politische Berichte. June 1989. p. 3.
  8. ↑ "Kurde angeklagt". Die Tageszeitung: taz (in German). 25 January 1989. p. 5. ISSN 0931-9085. Retrieved 12 October 2020.
  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 (9 March 1994). "Ein solcher Prozeß darf sich nicht wiederholen". Die Tageszeitung: taz (in German). p. 5. ISSN 0931-9085. Retrieved 12 October 2020.
  12. ↑ "Kandil bids farewell to Journalist Deniz Fırat". www.diclehaber.com. Archived from the original on 18 October 2020. Retrieved 12 October 2020.
  13. ↑ Çandar, Cengiz. Leaving the mountain': How may the PKK lay down arms? Freeing the Kurdish Question from violence (PDF). Tesev. p. 44. ISBN 978-605-5832-02-5. Retrieved 12 October 2020. {{cite book}}: |website= ignored (help)
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