Hüseyin Yıldırım, lawyer who defended Kurds through Turkey's post-coup years, dies at 89
Hüseyin Yıldırım, who represented Mazlum Doğan, Hayri Durmuş and Kemal Pir in Diyarbakır Prison and was jailed and tortured for it, has died.
RastinewsHüseyin Yıldırım, the lawyer who took on the legal defense of Kurdish political prisoners after Turkey's September 12 military coup, died on September 24, 2026. He was 89.
In years when repression under the junta kept many people off the streets altogether, Yıldırım pursued Kurdish detainees' cases through the State Security Courts, military tribunals and police station doors.
No funeral arrangements have been announced yet.
The lawyer of Diyarbakır's dungeon
Yıldırım represented Mazlum Doğan, Hayri Durmuş and Kemal Pir, held in Diyarbakır Prison No. 5. He was arrested in 1982 and subjected to severe torture.
He was released through the intervention of Amnesty International and later settled in Sweden, becoming one of the voices who brought word of what happened inside the prison to the world.
He survived an attack in the Netherlands
Yıldırım at one point held a position within the Kurdistan National Liberation Front (ERNK) in Europe, but broke with the organization after opposing the PKK's detention of Kurdish politician Mehmet Şener.
On June 15, 1989, he was shot in an armed attack in the Netherlands, hit by nearly 20 bullets, and survived. People close to him alleged the attack had been ordered by PKK leader Abdullah Öcalan.
A witness to Dersim 1938
Born in Dersim in 1937, Yıldırım was wounded as a child during the 1938 Dersim uprising, in which a number of his relatives were killed.
He graduated from Istanbul University's Faculty of Law in 1969. Forced to leave Turkey in 1982, he was able to return only 30 years later. He spent his final years in Stockholm, Sweden.