Ilhan Dayan, who was arrested on 18 August 1993, in the Turgutlu district of Manisa, was released from Diyarbakır Type-T Closed Prison on March 26 after 32 years of incarceration. During his sentence, he was held in prisons in Izmir, Aydın, Maraş-Elbistan, Mardin-Midyat, Rize-Kalkandere and Amed.
Speaking to ANF about imprisonment and the peace process, Dayan said: “The 32 years I spent in prison were years of resistance and struggle. Prison is not a place where one can live an ordinary life. It is a place where one can exist only through extraordinary effort, will, focus and faith. Without these, it is impossible to live with your own values in prison, to grow and to improve yourself.”
Remembering prison comrades
Dayan said that weakness can melt a person like a candle, decaying their spirit, heart, emotions and consciousness. “During my time in prison, we witnessed many such states of decay, but we also saw many comrades who grew and became like a torch. We witnessed the lives of comrades who, for freedom, gave up their bodies, souls and lives with great passion, becoming torches for us. We shared the same table, the same memories. When we speak about prison, we should remember and commemorate those friends first. They also taught us what it means to exist and to resist. Because we saw prison not as a state of annihilation but as a place of resistance, we believed that where there is resistance, there is life.We learned well in this geography that without resistance there can be no life. We had already learned this from our earlier heroes. We saw that walls held little meaning for us.”
One hardly dares to count
Dayan emphasized that from the 1980s to today, almost the entire nation that desired democracy, believed in freedom, and fought for the right of the Kurdish people to live freely on their own land has passed through prison: “One hardly dares to count. There were days when three or four generations shared the same ward: grandfather, father, grandson, mother living together. A whole nation has borne witness to the prison process. This is the reality. When defining the rights violations and injustices in prisons, one must see this big picture. There is a massive chain of rights violations.
Being there itself is already a rights violation. To focus narrowly on prison rights violations without seeing the big picture is to see only a tiny part of the truth. Until the chain of rights violations applied to our entire people is broken, it is impossible for rights, law and democracy to exist in prison. Meanwhile, prison administrations develop special methods to make every aspect of life unlivable, within a chain of rights violations. There are utterly arbitrary practices; practices depending on the momentary mood of administrators. Every imaginable rights violation exists and still continues.”
A new construction process
Speaking about the peace process that began after Öcalan’s 27 February call, Dayan said: “When the first statements on the process were made, I was in prison. We tried to follow on television. I want to describe the first feeling I had there. Leadership was telling us that the Kurdish people had reached a maturity and capacity to defend themselves, to organize themselves, to build their existence by democratic means. In this sense, the statement was actually a declaration of trust to us. It showed us that the reality of this people, shaped within the struggle, could now exist without weapons. We listened to the process with great excitement.
Currently, the process is discussed in many dimensions: negative aspects, points where it cannot advance, question marks, aspects that are not understood. There is also the reality of some circles deliberately manipulating it. Leadership speaks of a massive mental transformation, a project that will change the socio-political, cultural and political context of the Middle East.
The paradigm put forward by the Leadership has the intellectual and philosophical capacity not only to change Kurdistan but to alter the socio-political fate of the Middle East, to build its political destiny and its future. Without reading this, without seeing the chaos in the Middle East, the conflict reality is caught in a vicious cycle: the imperial powers’ designs over the region, Israel’s policies in Gaza, the calculations over the Middle East and Kurdistan, reducing this to a simple equation of laying down arms would be a grave injustice.
Leadership has opened the doors to a new life. President Öcalan speaks of a new social construction process. Therefore, it offers the possibility of rebuilding oneself in every imaginable field, from politics to literature. This is not a waiting period. Anyone who believes in democracy, freedom, and the Kurdish people’s national and social rights must see this as a process of struggle and embrace it.”
The State must take concrete steps
Dayan added: “For this project to progress, the state must rapidly take the necessary steps. Legal and constitutional changes must be made. The essence of this paradigm is this: Will everyone on these lands be able to live freely with their own identity and language? Will they be able to organize freely? Will they be able to engage in politics freely? Will they be able to use their language in the social, cultural and educational sense? Will they be able to maintain their faith and fulfill its requirements?
Everyone living in this geography, no matter their beliefs, language, culture or other social values, will live freely with their own historical and social values. Equality must be ensured in this regard, and legal and constitutional changes must be made swiftly.
It must be recognized that the old denialist and monolithic mindset has brought only chaos, blood and tears to these lands. The only things the libertarian and democratic paradigm will produce are equality, democracy, peace, tranquility, security and economic development. President Öcalan’s paradigm shows us that this is possible.”