A-Infos (en) France, OCL CA #355 - SOLIDARITY WITH ZEHRA KURTAY AND TURKISH POLITICAL REFUGEES (ca, de, fr, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

In Democratic Terrorization (1), Claude Guillon analyzed the legislative 
arsenal adopted in the name of the fight against terrorism and 
implemented from 1986 onwards by both left- and right-wing governments. 
He observed that the creation in July 1996 of the "offense of criminal 
association in connection with a terrorist enterprise" transformed a 
judicial procedure into a means of intimidating a targeted group 
regardless of whether an offense had been committed, thus creating the 
criminal form of the trial of intent. This dynamic was compounded at the 
European level by the adoption in 2001 of two framework decisions (2), 
binding on the legislation of the Member States of the European Union, 
defining offenses as "terrorist" from the moment the authorities decide 
to apply this label to their perpetrators. The creation of the European 
Arrest Warrant, allowing a magistrate to arrest a European citizen in 
their place of residence, completed the process, and the Convention on 
the Prevention of Terrorism was adopted in May 2005 (in force in France 
since August 2008).

As has often been written in Courant Alternatif, the margins are 
laboratories for state practices, even more so when it comes to 
repression. The figure of the foreigner is therefore central to security 
measures, whether they target external or internal "terrorism." Security 
is opposed to crime and terrorism, national identity to immigration, and 
it was under Sarkozy that the basic reactionary bingo card was embodied: 
terrorism, immigration, and juvenile delinquency.

From now on, anti-terrorist measures are inextricably linked to 
provisions repressing so-called irregular immigration.

Four decades of counterterrorism efforts have thus permeated the spirit 
and practice of the law, resulting in a more conventional form of 
counterterrorism whose concrete effects can be seen today, such as the 
procedures for advocating terrorism.

But its devastating impact can be even more clearly measured within the 
political immigrant community. The Kurdish and Turkish political refugee 
community has served as a formidable testing ground for counterterrorism 
justice. In October 2011, the signing of a security agreement between 
France and Turkey formalized "operational cooperation in the fight 
against terrorism." According to Claude Guéant, the agreement went "far 
beyond the agreements that France usually signs in the security field."

In 2010 and 2011, respectively 38 and 32 members of the PKK (3) were 
arrested in France. In November 2012, following an investigation led by 
Judge Thierry Fragnoli (4), 15 defendants, including three women, 
appeared before the 10th chamber of the Paris Criminal Court.

Most had refugee status. They had fled repression in Turkey, but some 
had grown up in France. Yet, from the French woman of Turkish origin 
accused of wearing a DHKP-C (5) t-shirt, to the "repeat offender" 
presented as the "leader" of a cell, the same collective and moral 
responsibility was being imposed upon them. The 15 defendants were 
accused of belonging to a group formed to prepare terrorist acts. Added 
to this was the charge of financing, notably through a cultural 
association and the sale of a magazine, Yürüyüs (6), which was legal in 
both France and Turkey. The editor of this magazine, Zehra Kurtay, will 
be sentenced alongside her colleagues to five years in prison. A 
revolutionary left-wing activist since her high school years, and a 
refugee in France since 2007, she has been subject to a deportation 
order (OQTF) since last May, despite the risks she would face if she 
were to return to her country of origin, Turkey, where she is considered 
a "terrorist" (the Turkish government has put a price on her head).

About Zehra Kurtay: After graduating from university in 1994, Zehra 
became a journalist. That same year, she was first imprisoned. She was 
subsequently arrested and imprisoned several times for her work as an 
editor for revolutionary newspapers and was subjected to torture, which 
left her disabled. In 2000, she was incarcerated in Umraniye Prison. In 
an effort to crush any resistance movement, the Turkish government 
planned to open "F-type" prisons, which transformed communal dormitories 
into small cells, thus isolating activists. In protest, Zehra and her 
comrades began a hunger strike that lasted 181 days, at the end of which 
she was force-fed, resulting in severe physiological and neurological 
damage. Released due to her deteriorating health, and then ultimately 
declared fit to return to prison by the Turkish fascist regime, she fled 
to France, where she was imprisoned once again.

Upon her release from prison in 2016, the legal harassment continued: 
due to anti-terrorism laws enacted in 2015, Zehra was forced to report 
to the police station every three months for ten years. Zehra Kurtay 
never failed to do so; yet her political refugee status was revoked 
without her knowledge by the French state in 2018. Zehra Kurtay then 
waged a two-pronged battle: political resistance and legal struggle. She 
ran an information table at the Strasbourg-Saint-Denis intersection for 
two years to denounce French imperialism, share her struggle, and 
collect signatures to support her application to renew her residency 
permit. Following this mobilization, the French state granted her an 
ordinary, non-political residency permit: a very precarious temporary 
permit that had to be renewed every three months. But at the beginning 
of May 2025, her residency permit was revoked by the Val-de-Marne 
prefecture, and at the end of May, when she went to an administrative 
appointment, Zehra was taken into custody, notified of the revocation of 
her residency permit, issued a deportation order, and ordered to return 
to Turkey. She was then transferred to the Oissel Administrative 
Detention Center, near Rouen, where she remained for six days. She was 
finally placed under judicial supervision.

Zehra Kurtay began another hunger strike on July 3rd and set up a 
resistance tent at the Porte de Saint-Denis in Paris, where a group of 
activists supports her, while passersby listen to the unbelievable story 
of a revolutionary ready to die for justice...

Mouloud Hollywood, special correspondent in Paris

Notes
(1) Democratic Terrorization, Claude Guillon, Libertalia Publishers, 2009.
(2) A framework decision is an instrument established within the 
framework of police and judicial cooperation in criminal matters within 
the European Union. It is adopted by the Commission. Parliament was not 
involved in the drafting of framework decisions.

(3) Kurdistan Workers' Party
(4) Thierry Fragnoli would later become involved in the Tarnac affair 
fiasco. He is now quietly finishing his career at the Papeete High Court 
in Tahiti. (5) The DHKP-C is the French Party

http://oclibertaire.lautre.net/spip.php?article4584
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