This year's Hüseyin Çelebi Literature Festival organized by the student associations Yekîtiya Xwendekarên Kurdistan (YXK) and Jinên Xwendekarên Kurdistan (JXK) will take place on 12 October in Berlin.

Since 1993, the event has continued the legacy of Hüseyin Çelebi, a pioneer of the Kurdish freedom movement in Germany and co-founder of Kurdish student organization in Europe. His commitment has paved the way for numerous generations of the Kurdish diaspora in political and cultural areas.

As the organizers announced, the deadline for submitting poems or short stories has been extended. "First of all, - they said - we would like to thank everyone for the works submitted. With the help of these works, we are reviving Kurdish culture and actively working against the assimilation policy of the occupying states of Kurdistan. Since we are also offering the languages ​​Farsi and Arabic for the first time this year, we would like to extend the deadline to 20 August and once again encourage everyone to submit poems or short stories."

Other permitted languages ​​are German, Kurmancî, Soranî, Kirmanckî (Zazakî) and Turkish. Contributions can be sent to the email address [email protected] or by post to: Kurdish Literature Festival, c/o Ferat Koçak, Schierker Straße 26, 12051 Berlin by August 20th. (Formatting requirements: Times New Roman, font size 12pt, line spacing 1.5.)

Hüseyin Çelebi

Hüseyin Çelebi was born on 22 September 1967 to a Turkish mother and a Kurdish father in Hamburg, where he grew up until he was 18. His first political activities began in 1974, when he took part in a demonstration against the deportation of 169 Kurds by the then Turkish Prime Minister Ecevit to the Saddam regime in Iraq. All 169 Kurds were executed after the deportation.

After abandoning his studies, Hüseyin Çelebi devoted himself entirely to political work. He worked primarily to gain more publicity for the Kurdish question in Germany and Austria. Among other things, he was a co-founder of the student association YXK and the magazine Kurdistan Report.

In February 1988, he was arrested and charged as a terrorist in the Düsseldorf trial along with 18 other Kurdish activists. Even during his imprisonment, he did not stop fighting for a just solution to the Kurdish question. In prison, he exchanged views with other political prisoners. His correspondence with RAF prisoner Christa Eckes was published as a book in 2021. In the summer of 1991, Hüseyin Çelebi went to Kurdistan, having decided to join the guerrillas. In mid-October 1992, he was killed in an attack by South Kurdish collaborators and the Turkish army in the Heftanîn region.