Kurdish politician and women’s rights activist Çağlar Demirel discusses Kurdish politics, women’s liberation, healthcare, and political repression in Türkiye in this interview from Diyarbakır (Amed), the largest Kurdish-majority city in southeastern Turkey.
Trained as a nurse, Demirel began her work in the 1990s, providing free healthcare in the Kurdish language to women affected by forced displacement and conflict. She describes her work promoting women’s health, reproductive healthcare, family planning, and support for survivors of violence, and explains how she later brought these priorities into Kurdish local government as mayor of Derik.
Demirel also recounts her years of political imprisonment. Arrested while serving as mayor, she later became a Member of the Turkish Parliament in 2015. After parliamentary immunity was lifted, she was arrested again in 2016 and remained imprisoned until 2021.
Today, Demirel remains active in the Kurdish women’s movement, working to build solidarity among Kurdish, feminist, socialist, and other women’s organizations in Türkiye, the Middle East, Europe, and beyond. She discusses Kurdish unity, democracy, peace, and the international women’s movement inspired by Jin, Jiyan, Azadî—“Woman, Life, Freedom.”
The interview is in Turkish with English subtitles.
Demirel was interviewed by Janet Biehl. The camera operator was Eric Agnero, and the interpreter was Ömer Fidan.
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