At the time of writing in February, Leyla Güven is at death’s door. The Kurdish MP was barred from taking her place in the Turkish Parliament after her arrest in January 2018 on terror charges for condemning Turkey’s invasion of Afrin in Rojava, Northern Syria, where a little-known feminist revolution is taking place (see pages 28, 29).
In November, she went on indefinite hunger strike to demand the release from solitary confinement of Abdullah Öcalan, leader of the Kurdish freedom struggle, and dubbed a terrorist. Not release from imprisonment, mind you; a modest enough demand given that the UN’s ‘Mandela rules’ already prohibit indefinite isolation.
