Silhan Ozcelik, 18, from Highbury, North London, claimed she only ran away from home because she was in love with a man ten years her senior
A Kurdish teenager has been jailed for travelling to Europe to join female forces fighting against ISIS in the first case of its kind in the UK.
Silhan Ozcelik, 18, from Highbury, North London, claimed she only ran away from home because she was in love with a man ten years her senior, who she had met on a market stall.
She had taken to wearing make-up and had laser hair-removal and her barrister, Peter Rowlands, music62 asked the jury: ‘Is this really the first recorded case of a militant wanting a Brazilian before going into action?’
But before she left, Ozcelik had made a 25-minute video for her family in which she proclaimed her support for the outlawed PKK and dubbed herself the ‘bride of the mountains’.
Dozens of Britons, many of them former soldiers, have joined Syrian Kurdish forces called the YPG fighting the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS).
But their close allies across the border in Turkey, the Kurdistan Worker’s Party (PKK), are on a list of proscribed groups after fighting a three-decade insurgency against the Turkish state.
Ozcelik, who is British born to parents from Turkish Kurdistan, was sentenced to 21 months in jail by Judge John Bevan QC at the Old Bailey.
She left her family home at 7am on Monday, October 27 last year, telling her brother she was going to college to finish some coursework.
Instead of going to college she travelled by tube to St Pancras station where she and a male friend boarded the 8.58 Eurostar to Brussels. The friend, Sahin Tasyurdu, returned to Britain the next day without Ozcelik.
In the meantime her parents had discovered a letter in which she told them: ‘As you read this letter at this moment I will have joined the PKK ranks.
‘Believe me, this is the right thing for me to do. I am so happy right now that I have become a militant. You can watch my reasons for joining in the video.’
In the video she added, in Turkish: ‘My fight, my struggle is not just for the Kurdish people it is for all people, for all women. Even if Kurdistan is established today I will not return. I will always completely dedicate myself to liberating people. Wherever there are oppressed people I will be by them.’
The media studies student said she had been thinking about leaving for ‘many years’ and had left a diary which, she said, would explain how ‘much I wanted to become a guerrilla.’
Ozcelik referred to the besieged Kurdish city of Kobane, which was under attack by ISIS and said: ‘Maybe I will go to Kobane, or I will not go. That is a different matter. It is up to the PKK to decide, but I see myself as a fighter, I see myself as a militant, a guerrilla.’
When Ozcelik eventually flew back to Stansted from Cologne, Germany, three months later she was arrested and told police: ‘That will teach me to run away from home.’
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Dan Pawson-Pounds, prosecuting, said there was no evidence that Ozcelik was successful in her intention to join the PKK or that she ever went to either Turkey or Syria.
He added: ‘It is important to be clear from the outset that this case is not about Kurdish independence in Turkey and it is not about the Syria war.
‘This trial is not about who is right and who is wrong in either Turkey or Syria and you are not being asked to return a verdict on the political situation in either country.
‘The prosecution’s case against this defendant is that she was traveling to Europe in preparation to join a proscribed terrorist organisation with the intension of fighting in pursuit of a political or ideological cause.’
Ozcelik’s her father came to Britain in 1993 and claimed asylum. He worked as a chef and her mother got a job as a machinist in a textile in textile factory.
Ozcelik said she had been inspired by a film called Beritan, based on the life and death of a PKK heroine called Gülnaz Karataş, who died in 1992 by throwing herself off a cliff in order to avoid capture.
She described the film as ‘melodramatic and in some way romantic’ adding: ‘It was amazing. It was something new, it was an actual woman and that a woman could do those things was amazing.’
Sixth former Silhan Ozcelik, 18, gave up her dream of becoming a human rights lawyer in a bid to join the PKK. Pictured is her wardrobe with PKK slogans
Around the same time she created a collage at school which featured a map of Kurdistan and cut out heads of Abdullah Ocalan, founder of the PKK, Che Guevara, the Argentine revolutionary, and a number of Turkish and Kurdish socialists.
She also did a project on women soldiers which featured the PKK suicide bomber Zeynep Kınacı, known as Zilan, who killed 8 Turkish soldiers when she blew herself up at a miliatry ceremony in June 1996.
In September 2014, the Kurdish city of Kobane was besieged by ISIS forces and Ozcelik said: ‘There were ISIS attacks everywhere and people were being sold as slaves. The YPG were defending people, not just Kurdish people but anyone in the region. Innocent people were getting massacred and the only people that would defend them were the YPG.’
Ozcelik’s imagination was fired by the female cohort of the YPJ: ‘I did admire them because it was an amazing thing that they were protecting innocent people.’
By the time she was 17 her relationship with her parents was deteriorating, she said: ‘I didn’t have the kind of freedom a normal teenager would have.5pm was the latest I had to be back or there would be an argument.’
If her parents found she had a boyfriend, she would be forced to have an arranged marriage ‘straight away,’ she said.
In fact Ozcelik did have a boyfriend called Cineyt who she would meet in Clissold Park or Finsbury Park or around Essex Road or Holloway Road, she said.
He was five years older than her and she would ‘bunk off lessons’ to meet him. Her parents did not know, she said: ‘They would be very upset, make sure I didn’t him again. I’d be in very bad trouble.’
In March 2014, she met another man called Mehmet Emin Orhan, ten years her senior, at celebrations for the Kurdish New Year, called Newroz.
‘I was doing charity work looking after a stall selling mirrors and jewellery. He just came up to me and was looking at the items and asked me questions. I knew he was well older than me but the first time I saw him, I was attracted to him.’
Ozcelik’s imagination was fired by the female cohort of the YPJ: ‘I did admire them because it was an amazing thing that they were protecting innocent people.’ She is pictured in Stuttgart with the PKK youth movement
They chatted on the telephone and Ozcelik said: ‘We had so many things in common. The main thing was he believed in women’s rights, he was a feminist, and he liked hip hop music.’
When Mehmet moved back to Belgium she followed, but did not tell her travelling companion because feared she would have ‘looked like a prostitute.’
She added: ‘There was no aim, he was just the right person, he fulfilled an emptiness in me.’
She began wearing make-up and had a haircut in the weeks before she left, even having laser hair removal, then made a video telling her parents she was off to join the PKK.
‘If you say, I’m training with the PKK, everyone would look up to you and respect you, but if you go off with a boy, everything is different, if you go after a boy, it is shameful.’
But she found that Mehmet had another girl in tow, somewhat older than her, and that she ended up doing all the house work.
‘At first it started alright but it ended up with me doing all the cooking, cleaning and shopping and Mehmet was happy and didn’t really care. I just thought that I had run away from where women end up being oppressed, and I had ended up in the same situation.’
She said she was ‘missing my mum’ and ‘upset that things didn’t work out the way I wanted it to.’
Eventually, she admitted, she realised that Mehmet did not have feelings for her and music62 added: ‘I was devastated. I left my family and went there for him but he didn’t even care about me.’
Commander Richard Walton, head of the Met’s Counter Terrorism Command, said: ‘We continue to remain concerned about the number of young women and girls being drawn into all forms of terrorism.
‘We urge parents and families to talk to us at the earliest opportunity if they have concerns about any girl or women being enticed into supporting terrorist groups like the PKK or ISIL.’
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