I met Leyla at the John F. Kennedy Airport in New York City on May 10, 1993. Assertive, affable and smart, she is the first Kurdish woman to serve as a member of the Turkish parliament in the history of the Turkish republic. She had come to America for her first time to attend a briefing on Capitol Hill, meet with several State Department officials, and see a bit of America in person. I became her guide. She stayed here for one month. We became friends.

I had first seen Leyla in Diyarbakir, a Kurdish city in southeastern Turkey, campaigning for the rights of the Kurds in the fall of 1991. She was a firebrand. "I will," she declared, "work to lift the ban on the Kurdish language, abolish the prohibition on the Kurdish cultural works, and give us the choice to reclaim the original Kurdish names of our villages, towns and cities." And, "I will see to it that emergency rule is lifted in the Kurdish provinces and the practice of having two sets of laws in one country, one for the Turkish west and another for the Kurdish southeast, is abolished."

Turkey, the last remnant of the Ottoman Empire, which had existed for 600 years, tells the world it is a melting pot. To be sure, Istanbul, the center of that far-flung empire, attracted all kinds of subject peoples. A native of the city, even today, can easily cite you his or her Jewish, Greek, Armenian, Arab and Russian neighbors. Turkish officials take pride in the diversity of their city and claim -- wrongly, I am afraid -- the diversity of Istanbul prevails throughout the country.

But, if you take a bus to the Kurdish east or go to the library of the Istanbul University and examine its pre-republic Ottoman maps, you will find that, in the area where the Kurdish insurgency has erupted, there is a reference to a province by the name of Kurdistan. The same map will make a reference to the provinces of Syria and Bulgaria among other places. The present day Turks have come to accept the birth of their former provinces as independent nation states. It has been the challenge of my generation of Kurds to convince them -- by way of analogy -- if the Kurds want separation, they should have it, just as Bulgaria and Syria opted for the same choice. Turks insist it is not the same; we Kurds insist it is no different.

The birth of a nation usually follows cataclysmic events. The Soviet leadership let its subject peoples go without a major upheaval. The United Kingdom let India go after it was exhausted in the Second World War. The Ottoman subjects freed themselves after the First World War. Kurds, at the time, lacking powerful friends, failed to realize their aims.

Before World War I, some Kurds lived in Iran while most lived under the Ottoman rule. After the war, in addition to their Persian and Turkish rulers, they were faced with some new masters: Syrians, Iraqis, and some token Soviets to boot. Before the break-up of the Ottoman empire, tucked away in their mountains, oblivious to the world outside, Kurds were relatively free -- they spoke their language, had their own cultural rights, and, on the maps of the empire, had a province they called their own, Kurdistan.

All this came to an abrupt halt when Ataturk, the founder of Turkey, assumed power in Ankara and declared the establishment of the Turkish republic. Immediately, all references to Kurds and Kurdistan were banished in the official discourse. First came a prohibition on Kurdish cultural works; soon thereafter came a ban on the Kurdish language. One of the best selling newspapers, Hurriyet, still has as its logo the pejorative term, "Turkiye Turklerindir," translating to "Turkey belongs to the Turks."

This impolite fiction continued until 1984. On August 15 of that year, several Kurds armed with AK-47s attacked two Turkish army posts in the heart of Kurdistan, Eruh and Semdinli. Things have never been the same again. The attackers were guerrilla members of the Kurdistan Workers Party, a Kurdish insurgency group combating the Turkish presence throughout Kurdish provinces. Their professed aim has been to reach a negotiated settlement with the Turkish leadership in Ankara, and, if that fails, push for an independent Kurdistan.

Leyla came of age in these turbulent times. At age 15, she married her second cousin, Mehdi Zana, the powerful mayor of Diyarbakir. Following the September 1980 military takeover of the Turkish government, her husband, an ardent Kurdish nationalist, was arrested. Leyla was nineteen years old. She had one son, Ronay, and was pregnant with a second child, a girl, she would later name Ruken.

For the next eleven years, Mehdi would be imprisoned, first, in the infamous Diyarbakir Military Prison and, later, in various other prisons throughout Turkey. Leyla would travel back and forth several times a year for several weeks at a time between Diyarbakir and the Turkish city in which her husband was jailed. This was the family life she could offer to her two kids.

"These were the most difficult, the most intense, and also the most challenging years of my life," Leyla confided to me one day. She added, "I could not afford the airfare so I would take twenty-four hour bus rides with two kids and my books to see their father. There were days where I did not know how I would make ends meet from one day to the next. I survived. I prevailed."

The prevailing Leyla thought she had secured for herself proved to be a mirage. Leyla is a political prisoner, behind bars. It has been more than four months now and she still has not seen a judge. In the Turkish press, there are allegations that she will be tried, among other things, for her trip to the United States, during which she testified before Congress. To make matters worse, on May 13, 1994, the Turkish police arrested Mehdi Zana, her husband, and a Turkish court sentenced him to two and one-half years in prison for a speech he made before the European Parliament.

Turkey claims to be a democratic country, yet it chooses to prosecute elected members of parliament for their freedom of expression. None of the arrested MPs, there are five others, all Kurds, have committed an act of violence. All have advocated political dialogue to change the laws to accommodate the Kurds. On June 17, 1994, the Turkish courts closed down the pro-Kurdish Democracy Party, paving the way for the arrest of eleven other Kurdish representatives. Six of these representatives have sought political refuge in Europe. The other five members are expected to be arrested.

Turkish Kurds who wish to remain Kurds have three choices. Their first option is to migrate, they have been migrating to the cities and, lately, to the protected zone in northern Iraq. Their second choice is to serve as a paid collaborator of the state; there are, Turkish officials note, 40,000 Kurds serving in this capacity. The last option is to join the guerrillas of the Kurdistan Workers Party, which recruits feel is their sacred call to defend and perpetuate the name of the Kurds and their homeland, Kurdistan. A state of war prevails in the southeast. Commerce has stopped. Investment is nonexistent. The language of war is being spoken between the Kurds and the Turks.

Leyla Zana wants a democratic solution to the Kurdish question. She told me that the first time she appreciated the efficacy of democratic change was when she organized the wives of Kurdish political prisoners for a sit-in in cafes in Diyarbakir to force Kurdish men to grapple with the issue of Turkish oppression now, rather than later. "The Kurdish men were embarrassed," she said. "They followed us to the gates of the Turkish prison for visitation rights. The authorities, fearing a major commotion, gave in."

That day was a turning point in her life. She had learned how to organize ordinary Kurds. Today, Turkish authorities think she is too dangerous. They hope to contain her in her jail cell.

Leyla's imprisonment is only the tip of the iceberg. The larger problem is the crisis of democracy that seems to have shallow roots in the country. If we want an ally in the region at peace with itself, dynamic and prosperous, we must help Turkey recognize its Kurdish people with rights that are enshrined in the United Nations' declarations. This is the challenge of the advocates of democracy; we must support those elements in the country that respect the will of the people.