İbrahim Ayhan (10 February 1968 – 20 September 2018) was a Turkish politician of

Kurdish Kurdish may refer to: *Kurds or Kurdish people *Kurdish language ** Northern Kurdish (Kurmanji) **Central Kurdish (Sorani) **Southern Kurdish ** Laki Kurdish *Kurdish alphabets *Kurdistan, the land of the Kurdish people which includes: **Southern ...

origin and a former Member of Parliament for

Şanlıurfa Urfa, officially called Şanlıurfa (), is a city in southeastern Turkey and the capital of Şanlıurfa Province. The city was known as Edessa from Hellenistic times and into Christian times. Urfa is situated on a plain about east of the Eup ...

Personal life and professional career

Born in

Siverek Siverek (; ; ) is a municipality and district of Şanlıurfa Province, Turkey. Its area is 3,936 km2, and its population is 267,942 (2022). Siverek is in the Şanlıurfa province but is geographically closer to the large city of Diyarbakır (a ...

, he graduated from the Yüzüncü Yıl University in

Van A van is a type of road vehicle used for transporting goods or people. There is some variation in the scope of the word across the different English-speaking countries. The smallest vans, microvans, are used for transporting either goods or ...

in 1992. After he worked as a teacher. From 1997 to 2007, he was an executive and chairperson of the Education and Science Workers' Union in Urfa. He was married with two children.

Political career and legal prosecution

On 5 October 2010, he was arrested as part of an investigation into the Kurdish confederalist Group of Communities in Kurdistan (KCK) organisation. After he became an independent candidate and was elected Member of Parliament (MP) for Sanliurfa in the

general elections A general election is an electoral process to choose most or all members of a governing body at the same time. They are distinct from by-elections, which fill individual seats that have become vacant between general elections. General elections ...

of 2011. A court in Diyarbakır refused to release several elected independent MPs, as was also Ayhan. He appealed to the

Constitutional Court A constitutional court is a high court that deals primarily with constitutional law. Its main authority is to rule on whether laws that are challenged are in fact unconstitutional, i.e. whether they conflict with constitutionally established ru ...

, claiming that the legally allowed detention time had been exceeded and his right to stand in elections had been violated. He was released alongside the imprisoned MP Gülser Yıldırım on 3 January 2014, enabling them to take the

oath Traditionally, an oath (from Old English, Anglo-Saxon ', also a plight) is a utterance, statement of fact or a promise taken by a Sacred, sacrality as a sign of Truth, verity. A common legal substitute for those who object to making sacred oaths ...

. On 28 August 2014, he joined the Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) parliamentary caucus along with all other BDP MPs. He was re-elected in the general elections of June and November 2015. In February 2018 he was dismissed as Member of Parliament for having shown solidarity with a killed fighter from the Peoples' Protection Units (YPG). He was sentenced to 1 year and 3 months imprisonment for sharing a photograph a fighter killed in

Syrian Kurdistan Syrian Kurdistan or Rojava () is a region in northern Syria where Kurds form the majority. It is surrounding three noncontiguous enclaves along the Turkish and Iraqi borders: Afrin in the northwest, Kobani in the north, and Jazira in the nor ...

, which was interpreted as terror propaganda. On the 20 September 2018 Ayhan died due to a heart attack he suffered in

Erbil Erbil (, ; , ), also called Hawler (, ), is the capital and most populated city in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq. The city is the capital of the Erbil Governorate. Human settlement at Erbil may be dated back to the 5th millennium BC. At the h ...

Iraqi Kurdistan Iraqi Kurdistan or Southern Kurdistan () refers to the Kurds, Kurdish-populated part of northern Iraq. It is considered one of the four parts of Greater Kurdistan in West Asia, which also includes parts of southeastern Turkey (Northern Kurdist ...

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Ayhan, Ibrahim 1968 births 2018 deaths People from Siverek Deputies of Şanlıurfa Democratic Regions Party politicians Peoples' Democratic Party (Turkey) politicians Members of the 24th Parliament of Turkey Members of the 25th Parliament of Turkey Members of the 26th Parliament of Turkey Expelled legislators Van Yüzüncü Yıl University alumni