Yekta Uzunoglu

Who is Yekta Uzunoglu?

Yekta Uzunoglu or Yekta Geylanî, is a contemporary Turkish writer, translator and entrepreneur of Kurdish origin. In 1971, he moved to France to continue his studies. From 1973 to 1979, he studied general medicine at the University of Prague. He became involved in the resistance movement against the communist regime of Czechoslovakia after 1968. When the regime of Gustáv Husák began to hand Kurdish students over to Saddam Hussein, he was among a group of Kurdish students who organized a hunger strike. After completing his studies, he was expelled from Prague and moved to Germany in the 1980s where he stayed for a couple of years and helped in establishing Kurdish Institute of Bonn. He returned to Prague after the Velvet Revolution. He has been an active member of Médecins Sans Frontières, and has helped Kurds in Iraqi Kurdistan and set up a field hospital. He received the František Kriegel prize for civic courage in 2006.