FIGEN YÜKSEKDAG

Figen Yüksekdağ was born on 9 November 1971
in Adana-Ceyhan.

Having met the socialist movement during her high school years, Yüksekdag joined the political freedom movement at a young age and faced state repression and arrests. During her high school years, she assumed various responsibilities in the High School Students Union (LÖB), the High School Labourer Women's Union and the Democratic High School Students' Union. During her university years, she took part in the establishment of the University Students' Associations.

She worked as a journalist for various socialist publications, including the youth magazine Özgür Gençlik and the weekly newspaper Atılım. For years, she took an active part in the women's liberation struggle and was the editor of the magazine "Sosyalist Kadın" (Socialist Woman). In 2002 she became the spokesperson of the Socialist Platform of the Oppressed.

In 2006, after a year of imprisonment, she participated in the establishment and work of the Labourer Women's Association, which mobilised working women for freedom.

In 2009 she was arrested again for attending the funeral of socialist intellectual Kutsiye Bozoklar (Işık Kutlu).

In 2010 she participated in the founding of the Socialist Party of the Oppressed (ESP) and assumed the presidency of this party.

In this period of political breakthrough, when the Arab uprisings and Occupy protests against the economic crisis swept the world, she took part in the establishment of the Peoples' Democratic Congress, and in June 2014 she was elected co-chair of the Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP).

As a woman from the Turkish people, she never remained silent against the oppression and persecution of the Kurdish people and raised the flag of the brotherhood of the peoples. Between 2015 and 2018, she was elected MP from the Kurdish region of Van. As HDP co-chair and MP, she was repeatedly attacked by the police together with the HDP masses. He was subjected to lynch campaigns by media trolls under the power of the government. On 4 November 2016, he was arrested together with HDP Co-Chair Selahattin Demirtaş and other prominent representatives of the party as part of the Kobanê Case.

While he was in prison, the attacks of the political power did not end; his poetry book "Walls to be Destroyed", which he wrote in prison, was banned and all copies were confiscated. During her time as Co-Chairperson of the HDP, she has always pioneered the values of the great humanity and formed a resolute force against the murderous ISIS army and its supporters and accomplices who attack the social conscience. Figen Yüksekdag is the representative of the ideal of self-determination and equal rights of women, of the free and common life of all the peoples of the Middle East/West Asia.

She has never succumbed to all attacks and pressures both in her struggle outside and in prison. She took part in the struggle of women, workers and labourers as a pioneering woman.