Mother of jailed TJA spokeswoman buried in her daughter's absence

TJA spokeswoman Ayşe Gökkan's request for parole to attend her mother's funeral has not been answered. Lütfiye Gökkan was buried by other Kurdish politicians and activists.

Lütfiye Gökkan was buried in Suruç district of Urfa in the absence of her daughter Ayşe Gökkan. A request by the TJA spokeswoman, who is imprisoned in Amed (Diyarbakir) Women's Prison, for parole to attend the funeral of her mother, who died of COVID-19 on Tuesday, has not been answered.

The funeral was attended by HDP deputies Ömer Öcalan, Ayşe Sürücü and Semra Güzel, DBP chairwoman Saliha Aydeniz and representatives of the prisoners' aid organization MED TUHAD-FED and the Peace Mothers' Initiative. The coffin was carried to the cemetery by women. After the funeral, the mourners gathered at the family home.

Born in 1965, journalist and feminist Ayşe Gökkan is a spokesperson for the Free Women's Movement (Tevgera Jinên Azad, TJA) and is internationally known as an activist. At international women's platforms and conferences, she has made a significant contribution to the fight against violence against women and for women's influential participation in political processes. In 2009, she was elected mayor of Mardin’s Nusaybin district with 83 percent of the vote. She has been in prison since January after arrest warrants were issued against her in one of the 215 trials. It is not her first imprisonment; she was last in pre-trial detention for five months in 2017. Prosecutors asked for a prison sentence of between 16 and 35 years in the case, which is still ongoing. The court refused to release her from custody in exchange for reporting conditions because of the alleged "seriousness of the guilt." The next hearing will take place on September 13.