Close relative of terrorist Kurdish leader enters Turkish parliament

In Turkey, the name Öcalan is permanently linked to the national rival, leader of a Kurdish insurgency in which 40,000 people died. But on Tuesday, an Öcalan became one of the country’s youngest parliamentarians. Dilek Öcalan, the 28-year-old niece of jailed militant leader Abdullah Öcalan, took her oath along with other deputies elected to parliament earlier this month.

Her arrival as a lawmaker for the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic party (HDP) underlines a remarkable turnaround in recent years for Turkey’s 14 million Kurds.

It also breaks a decades-old taboo over her name. At her swearing in, the speaker addressed her as “esteemed Öcalan”. Scores of people have previously been prosecuted in the past for using the same term to refer to her uncle.

Dilek Öcalan was one of 80 HDP politicians elected on 7 June. The HDP won more than 10% of the vote, the minimum required to enter parliament, allowing a pro-Kurdish party to be represented for the first time.

“Abdullah Öcalan probably opposed her candidacy,” his brother Mehmet Öcalan told the press in April. The PKK is still considered a terrorist organisation by the United States, European Union and Turkey, and its principles call for greater Kurdish autonomy.

Among other HDP deputies sworn in on Tuesday was Leyla Zana, who caused uproar in 1991 when she was also elected to parliament. On that occasion, she took her oath in Turkish but added one sentence in Kurdish even though it was illegal to speak the language in public places at the time. She was subsequently jailed for a decade.