Baydemir, Osman

(1971- )

   Osman Baydemir is a dynamic ethnic Kurdish politician and human rights advocate in Turkey. He was first elected mayor of his hometown, Diyarbakir, in 2004 and reelected with a large majority in the local elections of March 2009. As a member of the pro-Kurdish Democratic Society Party (DTP), he famously proclaimed that Diyarbakir was his party's castle when the governing AK Partisi of Recep Tayyip Erdogan unsuccessfully sought to capture it in the local elections of 2009.

   Baydemir has been charged with numerous criminal acts because of his advocacy of Kurdish rights. For example, in 2007 he was unsuccessfully prosecuted for violating a Turkish law prohibiting the use of letters not in the Turkish alphabet when he sent out a New Year's greeting in Kurdish that included the common Kurdish letter "W." Ironically, of course, this letter appears ubiquitously throughout Turkey on the Internet as well as many public toilets. Along with 55 other mayors from the DTP he also was indicted for supporting the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) because in December 2005 he had signed a petition to the Danish prime minister urging him not to close the Kurdish television station ROJ-TV. The Turkish daily Radical reported in 2006 that 129 investigations had been conducted against him during the previous two years. In April 2009, he was sentenced to 10 months in prison for calling militants of the outlawed PKK "guerrilla fighters." He is married to another human rights activist, Reyhan Yalcindag. They have one son.