Ali Haydar Kaytan
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Ali Haydar Kaytan | |
|---|---|
| Born | 26 March 1952 |
| Died | 3 July 2018 (aged 66) |
| Cause of death | Killed during a cross-border airstrike by the Turkish Armed Forces targeting the PKK in the Kurdistan Region |
| Other names | Fuad |
| Occupation | Militant |
| Organization | Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) Kurdistan Communities Union (KCK) |
| Known for | Co-founder of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), Member of the Executive Council of the Kurdistan Communities Union |
| Movement | Kurdistan Workers' Party insurgency |
Ali Haydar Kaytan (26 March 1952 – 3 July 2018), also known as Fuad,[1] was a co-founder of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) militant and a member of the executive council of the Kurdistan Communities Union.
Ali Haydar Kaytan was born on 26 March 1952 in Nazımiye, Tunceli.[2] He belonged to a Kurdish Alevi family that was settled in place of the Zaza Kurds who were exiled after the Dersim rebellion.[3]
He was among the early members of a group along with Abdullah Öcalan, Haki Karer, Mazlum Doğan and Cemîl Bayik which held regular ideological meetings from 1973 onwards and which would later become known as the "Kurdistan Revolutionaries".[4] In December 1974 he was shortly detained together with Öcalan and Kalkan, before the ADYÖD was closed down.[4] He was among the co-founders of the Kurdistan Workers' Party which was established in November 1978.[5] At the second party congress, which took place in Lebanon, the PKK sent him to Europe in order to raise support.[1] On 22 July 1984, he took part in a decisive meeting in a PKK camp in the Lolan valley in Iraq where the decision was to begin with the insurgency.[6] Cemil Bayik and Duran Kalkan also took part in the meeting.[6] He returned to Germany, where he was arrested in 1988[7] and during the Kurdish Trial in Düsseldorf, he was accused of being a member of a so-called revolutionary court in Barelias, Lebanon, which sentenced two people to death.[8] While he was in prison he entered into a hunger strike several times in protest of the pre-trial detention conditions.[7][9] He was sentenced to seven years imprisonment on 7 March 1994 for being a member of a terrorist organisation, but the murders were not taken into account. The judges ruled that the murders fell under a Lebanese amnesty which covered crimes which occurred during the Lebanese civil war.[10] He was released immediately due to his years in pre-trial detention together with Duran Kalkan, who was also charged with being a member of a terrorist organization.[11] He then returned to Kurdistan and became a member of the co-presidency council of the Kurdistan Communities Union (KCK).[12]