Abstract
When Mehdi Zana wrote these words, he had been a prisoner of conscience2 for more than a decade, and he would be imprisoned again for his activism in support of his people, the Kurds. His body bears witness to the torture he endured at the hands of the Turkish state. His imprisonment was the Turkish state’s validation and criminalization of his Kurdish identity His book, Prison No. 5, publicized Turkey’s abuses to the international community at a time before Kurds had become a focal point of Middle Eastern politics; Zana lived through years during which Turkey could, and did, deny Kurdish identity. Zana’s writing, specifically Prison No. 5, records the dehumanizing policies and practices of the Turkish state and succinctly tells the history of the Kurds.
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