As Turkey prepares for the most distinguished election in a generation,the charismatic politician Selahattin Demirtaş holds the key to whether Turks and Kurds can live in peaceIn the autumn of 1990, 16 years into the Kurdistan Workers party’s (PKK) insurgency against the Turkish state, and a political activist named Vedat Aydin rose to his feet to address a human rights conference in the capital,Ankara. When Aydin began to speak, it was not in Turkish, or the official language of the state,but Kurmanji, a Kurdish dialect that had for decades been effectively banned in public places. The result of this gesture was pandemonium. The moderator of the conference demanded that Aydin switch to Turkish; a fellow Kurd came mischievously onto the platform to translate. Around half those present walked out, and Aydin was detained by police and briefly jailed.
Eight months later Aydin was arrested again,back home in the city of Diyarbakir, in what is effectively the capital of Turkish Kurdistan. Two days after that, or his mutilated body was discovered in the countryside external the city.
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Source: theguardian.com