Silhan Özçelik alleged to have travelled to Brussels last year in bid to join the PKK, a banned Kurdish militant organisation

A London teenager travelled to Europe in an attempt to join the PKK, a proscribed terrorist organisation, saying she wanted to be a “fighter”, a “militant” and a “guerrilla”, a court was told.

Silhan Özçelik, 18, left her family home in London and travelled to Brussels, telling her family she wanted to join the PKK, or Kurdistan Workers’ party, and go wherever they sent her, an Old Bailey jury heard.

Prosecuting, Dan Pawson-Pounds said the teenager left behind a letter and video for her family. The letter read: “As you read this letter at this moment I will have joined the PKK ranks. Believe me this is the right thing for me to do. I am so happy right now that I have become a militant.” It added: “You can watch the reasons for my joining in the video.”



The court heard that in the video, which was in Turkish, she said: “I, as Silhan, want to become a militant. I want you to understand this and me. Yes, I could have studied, it could have borne fruits, yes, I could have become a lawyer but I, as Silhan, am saying this specifically: I, as Silhan, want to become a militant.”



She added that her “struggle” was “for all people, and all women”, not just for the Kurdish people, the jury heard, and she had been “thinking about this for many years” and had been “wanting to join for many years”.



Pawson-Pounds said she explained her reasons for wanting to join the PKK, including the positive role that women played in the PKK and her concern about the fate of the largely Kurdish city of Kobani in Syria, which the PKK were fighting to retake from Islamic State (Isis).



He told the jury, she said in the video: “Maybe I will go to Kobani, or I will not go. That is a different matter. It is up to the PKK to decide. But I see myself as a fighter, I see myself as a militant, a guerrilla.



Özçelik is charged with engaging in conduct in preparation for terrorist acts contrary to the Terrorism Act 2006. She denies the charge.



It is alleged that between 1 and 27 October 2014, with the intention of committing acts of terrorism, she arranged to travel to Europe to join and fight for the PKK, and that she travelled to Belgium for the purpose of joining the PKK in order to commit acts of terrorism.



The prosecution alleges that the purpose of her travel was “political and ideological” and that at the time the 17-year-old, who had dropped out of college and transferred to a new sixth form, was politically engaged “with a strong interest in Kurdish independence”.



The jury was told she purchased a single Eurostar ticket from London to Brussels on 23 October. Several days later she asked a friend to purchase a blue rucksack for her.



The prosecution alleges that on Monday 27 October 2014 she travelled from St Pancras station in London to Brussels with a man called Sahin Tasyurdu. He returned the following day.



In January 2015, police received information that Özçelik was returning to the UK, and she flew into Stansted airport on 16 January from Cologne, Germany. She was arrested at Stansted. She told police officers at the airport “that will teach me to run away from home”, the prosecution said.

The jury was told that they might have heard of the PKK, either in relation to its fight for Kurdish independence in Turkey, or in relation to its involvement in the ongoing conflict in Syria. This was not a case about Kurdish independence in Turkey, and was not about the Syrian civil war, said Pawson-Pounds.



The prosecution’s case was that she was travelling to Europe in preparation to join a proscribed terrorist organisation with the intention of fighting in pursuit of a political or ideological cause.



Earlier, Judge John Bevan told jurors that it was a case about terrorism and it was essential they put “any prejudice aside based on the events of last Friday in Paris, which incidentally has nothing to do with the case we are about to try”.

The case continues.