Mazlum Doğan

Mazlum Doğan was a journalist and a founding member of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK). He was a Kurdish Alevi which was often told to attract new recruits to PKK. He was the first editor-in-chief of the PKK's propaganda newspaper Serxwebûn. In 1979, he had planned to leave Turkey towards Syria but was arrested and served time in the infamous Diyarbakir No. 5 prison. Mazlum Doğan committed suicide in protest of the Turkish coup d'état and the inhumane conditions he and other prisoners were facing inside of the penitentiary. Today he is presented as a hero and a martyr by the PKK and related organisations.