Mazlum Doğan was born in 1955 in Karakoçan/Elâzığ Province.

He was a member of the Central Committee of the Kurdistan Workers' Party, PKK. He was a Kurdish Alevi.

After he finished high school in Elazığ in 1974 he enrolled at Hacettepe University in Ankara at the Department of Economics.

In 1976 he left the University and joined the students movement where he came in contact with many leftist students who would soon found the PKK.

Mazlum Doğan has been the first chief editor of the parties' newspaper Serxwebûn. In 1979 he planned leaving Turkey towards Syria, but was arrested over accusations of founding and leading a terrorist organisation, taking part in the liberation of a comrade from a state hospital in Diyarbakır and identity document forgery.

On 21 March 1982, the day Kurds celebrate Newroz by lighting up bonfires, Doğan ended his life in order to protest against the brutality of the Turkish Government.

With this act he tried to awake awareness on the inhumane conditions at Diyarbakır Prison and other jails in Turkey during the 1980 Turkish coup d'état.

His action gave way to a number of hunger strikes and resistance campaigns run by political prisoners.

This year’s Newroz will celebrate Mazlum Doğan, the modern Kawa, and Zülküf Gezen, who ended his life a few days ago in Tekirdağ prison, where he was serving the 12th year of a life sentence.

HDP Hakkari MP Leyla Güven, who is leading the hunger strike demanding the end of isolation against Kurdish People’s Leader Abdullah Ocalan, told the family of Zülküf Gezen: “The resistance action of Mazlum Doğan was revived by comrade Zülküf Gezen 40 years later. Comrade Zülküf is the Mazlum Doğan of this age.”