Letter to Leyla Zana

								Paris, September 5, 1994




My very dear Leyla, 

	On opening the newspaper Liberation this morning, I was surprised to 
see a full page text resuming the defense that you made before the Turkish 
courts.  I read and reread it with great interest.  I very much appreciated the 
clarity of your ideas and the strength of your arguments and of your 
convictions.  I congratulate you. 
	Your faith in democracy and in the need to seek political solutions to 
the serious problems facing your people through dialogue should win 
sympathy from public opinion in the Western democracies.  You have 
moreover become the most popular Kurdish woman in Europe.  The same 
would be true in your own country if you had there a truly free and 
independent press concerned with truth and objectivity.  Observing the recent 
press campaigns against me, those conducted two years ago against Nelson 
Mandela who was dragged through mud for refusing the so-called Peace Prize 
granted by a government that persecutes its millions of Kurdish citizens, the 
attacks against the German SPD, against Amnesty, and against all those 
concerned over the fate of the Kurdish people and human rights in your 
country, I understand to what extent the media in your country finds itself in 
the service of governmental propaganda.  Their absurd and cruse stories, 
invented of whole cloth, only serve to discredit all the more your leaders.  
Unfortunately, they serve also to spread misinformation and to mislead the 
Turkish public which while it rightly defends the legitimate rights of Turkish 
communities in Bulgariaa or Cyprus has great difficulty in understanding 
that in order to be credible and consequent in its actions Turkey must 
recognize these same rights for its Kurdish citizens.
	Basically, these press campaigns tell those of us in the West a great deal 
about the workings of your state and its methods.  They also have the effect of 
undercutting the credibility of the accusations made against you and your 
colleagues.  
	I am persuaded that the truth will triumph in the end and that all will 
understand that you are being tried for you opinion, because you are Kurds 
and because you seek, through non violent means, your identity and 
legitimate rights of you people and, for your country, a democracy that meets 
universal standards.
	For this reason, the political trial to which you are being subjected will 
in the end become, for public opinion, the trial of the regime.  Your 
government risks having a heavy price to pay should it issue a guilty verdict 
against you.
	I continue to hope that will be avoided thanks to the pressure of public 
opinion and to your own struggle, that reason will in the end prevail over 
passion, that Turks who value democracy will rise up to support you and that 
together you will be able to reestablish the dialogue and the peaceful relations 
that the Kurdish and Turkish peoples - victims of an absurd and ruinous war 
- so badly need.
	It is with that hope that I send my best wished for strength, and that I 
affectionately embrace my dear brave daughter.  Don't forget to convey my 
greeting to Medhi, to Ahmet Turk and to your other friends in jail.

								-Danielle Mitterrand
								Paris, September 5, 1994