Who was Mehdi Zana, the former Diyarbakır mayor who died at 86?

Mehdi Zana, the former mayor of Diyarbakır, died at 86 while receiving treatment for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease at a hospital in the city.

Zana was born in Silvan, Diyarbakır province, on Dec. 20, 1940. His birth surname was Bilici, which he later changed to Zana, a Kurdish word meaning “wise.” He married Leyla Zana in 1975 and had two children. Leyla Zana later served as a Diyarbakır lawmaker.

He entered political activity at an early age. Zana served in the leadership of the Revolutionary Eastern Cultural Hearths and founded the Silvan branch of the Workers’ Party of Turkey in 1963, leading it for two years.

In the 1978 local elections, he won the Diyarbakır mayoralty as an independent candidate. After the Sept. 12, 1980 military coup, authorities arrested him. He spent a total of 16 years in prisons in Diyarbakır, Aydın, Afyon and Eskişehir.

Zana lived in Sweden for about 10 years from 1994 before returning to Turkey in October 2004. He was detained during subsequent legal proceedings and later released. He died on Saturday, Aug. 29, after a period of treatment for COPD.