By Melissa Cunningham
A Melbourne woman arrested in Turkey over alleged connections to a Kurdish nationalist group has been described as a “human rights activist, not a terrorist” by a local councillor and friend in Australia.
Turkish media reported Cigdem Aslan, who also goes by Lenna Aslan, was arrested by the country’s National Intelligence Organisation and police at Istanbul Airport last week before she could return to Australia.
Melbourne nurse Cigdem Aslan, 51, has been arrested by Turkish authorities.
The 51-year-old was reportedly detained on suspicion of conducting activities for the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, also known as the PKK, which is listed as a terrorist organisation in Turkey and Australia.
Merri-bek councillor Sue Bolton, who has known Aslan for more than a decade, said the mother of two was an active member of the Melbourne Kurdish community and passionate about ending discrimination against and oppression of Kurds.
“She’s a good friend of mine,” Bolton, who is from the Socialist Alliance, said. “She is a salt-of-the-earth humanitarian. She is a human rights activist. She is not a terrorist.”
Bolton said she had learnt a few days ago that Aslan had been detained.
Merri-bek councillor Sue Bolton. Credit: Joe Armao
She said she was deeply worried about Aslan, an experienced nurse who she said had serious health issues.
“This is an urgent situation,” Bolton said.
It was her understanding that Aslan had travelled back to Turkey to visit family.
Since Aslan’s arrest, she had heard from the Melbourne Kurdish community that another person from the same community had also been arrested recently at Istanbul airport on their way back to Australia, Bolton said.
“This was someone who’s not involved in any kind of organising at all in the Kurdish community in Melbourne,” she said. “They went to the odd event, but not all the events. Cigdem [Aslan] is a lot more active in the Kurdish community, but she is not a terrorist.
“She is a really wonderful, warm human being, and she is a full-on supporter of the human rights of anyone who is oppressed.”
Bolton said Aslan was also a passionate activist for the rights of Indigenous Australians and felt there were parallels with the Kurdish struggle.
The Multicultural Centre for Women’s Health in Melbourne has listed Aslan as a bilingual health educator on its website.
Her online biography says she came to Australia 25 years ago as a Kurdish migrant from Turkey. It says she has worked as a registered nurse, including for six years as a drug and alcohol nurse at St Vincent’s Hospital in Melbourne. It describes her as a single mother of two daughters who is passionate about human rights, community volunteering and advocating for minorities.
Turkish media said Aslan co-chaired a Kurdish organisation linked to the PKK and alleged she had participated in Australian protests against Turkish raids on Kurdish forces in Iraq.
Turkish pro-government newspaper The Daily Sabah also reported Aslan had Australian-based links to the PKK. The newspaper alleged she had been tracked by Turkish intelligence “for a long time” and had been in contact with “high-level members of the terror group”.
Bolton said she did not believe this was true. She said Aslan’s friends and the Australian Kurdish community were lobbying politicians to help bring her home.
Brusk Aeiveri, co-chair of the Federation of Democratic Kurdish Society Australia, said Aslan’s family were shocked and distressed by news of her detainment.
“They are very upset and very stressed,” Aeiveri said.
“Most of us here in Australia, we are refugees, we’re not criminals. But in Turkey, we cannot express our culture, we can’t speak our language, we cannot sing songs in Kurdish without fear of persecution,” he said.
Aeiveri said he had worked alongside Aslan, packing food hampers for people in need during the pandemic.
He said he believed there was no weight to any of the allegations of terrorism and that he knew of several cases of Kurdish people being arrested at the airport on their way back to Australia and having their passports confiscated.
“I believe she’s been criminalised simply because she is Kurdish,” he said.
Aslan wasquoted on the Australian Green Left website in 2022 commending Bolton and the Socialist Alliance for supporting “Kurdish people’s struggle for self-determination”.
Last year, she organised a seminar titled Kurdistan: Past, Present and Future, with a panel of academics and people with personal experience, to discuss human rights in the Kurdistan region.
The PKK has fought a long-running insurgency against Turkey in which about 40,000 people have been killed. In Australia, there is a growing movement to delist the Kurdish nationalist group as a terrorist organisation.
The Australian government describes the PKK as an “ideologically motivated violent extremist organisation”.
“The Kurdistan Workers’ Party’s nationalist ideology encompasses the rights of Kurds to maintain their Kurdish ethnic identity,” the government’s description of the group reads.
“Further to its nationalist objectives, the Kurdistan Workers’ Party aims to monopolise Kurdish political power, including by attacking the interests of rival political parties. However, the Kurdistan Workers’ Party primarily conducts attacks against the Turkish government and security forces.”
The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade said it was “providing consular assistance to an Australian woman detained in Türkiye [Turkey]” , but did not provide details.
“Owing to our privacy obligations we are unable to provide further comment,” it said.
An Australian man has previously been charged with being a member of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party.
In May 2019, the NSW Supreme Court sentenced Renas Lelikan, who had pleaded guilty, to a three-year community corrections order for being a member of the group from April 2011 to August 2013.
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