DTK co-chair and HDP Hakkari MP Leyla Güven was released two days ago from Amed prison.

Leyla Güven had been held in prison illegally and she has been on hunger strike for 81 days demanding the end of isolation regime imposed upon Kurdish People’s Leader Abdullah Öcalan.

Leyla Güven said in her statement: “I had a really hard time while I got out of Amed prison. That is the place where I started this resistance. Those walls were soaked with the spirit of the 14 July resistance. I really felt that spirituality when I started this resistance. I have lived again those friends who resisted during that period, their words [she is referring to the resistance by PKK prisoners on 14 July 1984]. I've been fasting for 81 days. I felt very good in prison. But since yesterday [since she was released] I feel like I'm far from that spirituality. I'm trying to keep this feeling. The water, air or anything else here outside does not come as any natural to me. It's like it is more natural inside (prison). As I said I feel very strange.”

I am ready to pay the price

Leyla Güven added: “Another pillar of this resistance is the work carried out outside. These actions were our moral source. You voiced our demands, people talked, the resistance spread everywhere ... A German newspaper sent me questions for an interview a few days ago: “Did your party support you enough?” I said: ‘Thanks to my party, my voice arrived in Germany, to you’.

I commend all of our efforts and commitment. This is a struggle that we all have to carry on. Isolation is a crime against humanity. We have tried to break it, and remove it on several occasions but had no luck. If this tyrant, fascist state wants us to pay a price, as a Kurdish woman, I am willing and glad to pay the price.

I took the first step, but now the prisons are carrying it on. If only you saw the morale, motivation and enthusiasm in the prisons… It is with this enthusiasm that prisons will break this isolation. No one should ever doubt that.”