Sırrı Sakık

Sırrı Sakık

Sırrı Sakık (born 1 August 1957, Yürecik, Muş Province, Turkey^[1]) is a Turkish-Kurdish journalist and politician, and a member of the Grand National Assembly of Turkey for the Peace and Democracy Party (BDP). Sakık was previously a journalist for Cumhuriyet and Vatan.

Background

Sakık is the brother of former Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) commander Şemdin Sakık. His brother Abdulsamet Sakık, a Democracy Party (DEP) politician who was the party's chair in Gaziantep, was assassinated on 3 November 1993.^[2]

Career

Sakık was first elected to the Grand National Assembly of Turkey in 1991. He was a founding member of the Democracy Party (DEP) in 1993, and was one of the DEP deputies sentenced in 1994 to 15 years in prison for links with Kurdish militants, after their parliamentary immunity was revoked.^[3] He was later released, and played a role in the People's Democracy Party (HADEP), being arrested after a 1996 incident in which masked men dropped the Turkish flag at its party congress and raised the PKK flag (Sakık had walked out in protest, but later said all flags should be respected).^[4][5]

He was a founding member of the Democratic Society Party (DTP) in 2005.^[6] He entered parliament again in 2007, technically running as an independent, but he was deputy chairman of the DTP.^[7] He was re-elected in 2011 for the Peace and Democracy Party (again, technically as an independent), after the DTP was banned in 2009.^[1][8]

In 2012 he displayed a bullet in parliament, which he said had been sent to him as a death threat.^[9]

In the 2014 local elections he was elected as mayor of Ağrı.

References

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