KON-MED celebrates its second congress in Cologne

The nationwide umbrella organization KON-MED (Konfederasyona Civakên Kurdistaniyên li Almanya) held its second congress in Cologne. In addition to an evaluation of the previous work of the umbrella organization, which was founded two years ago through the merger of five federations, the upcoming activities were planned Zübeyde Zümrüt and Engin Sever were elected new co-chairs. The board of KON-MED consists of a total of 27 members.

Until recently, Engin Sever was the co-chair of FED-MED, while Zübeyde Zümrüt has arrived in Germany not so long ago. In the last local elections in Turkey in March 2019, she was elected co-mayor of Bağlar, the most populous district in the Kurdish metropolis of Amed (Diyarbakir), with over 70 percent of the vote.

Nevertheless, instead of Zümrüt and co-mayor Zeyyat Ceylan, the AKP candidate, whom the Turkish electoral commission had subsequently appointed mayor, moved into the town hall. For a while, Zümrüt then acted as council group spokeswoman for the HDP in Bağlar. In the following September, an appeals court finally upheld a verdict against her of five years and two-month prison sentence. Zümrüt, who had already been in Turkish prisons several times, then left her home country.

300 delegates from FED-MED (North Rhine-Westphalia), FCDK-KAWA (Saarland and Hesse), FCK (Baden-Württemberg and Bavaria), FED-DEM (Lower Saxony, Hamburg and Bremen) and FCDK (Berlin and Saxony). Representatives from Die Linke, MLPD, the Congress for the Reconstruction of Dersim, the Federation of Democratic-Alevi Maraş Associations (MARDEF) and the Communist Party of Kurdistan (KKP) also joined the congress.