Leyla Güven

Who is Leyla Güven?

Leyla Güven was mayor of the municipality of Viranşehir in the Şanlıurfa Province of Southeast Anatolia of Turkey, of the former Democratic Society Party. She was elected in the March 2009 local elections.

The seventh and youngest child of her family, Güven entered into an arranged marriage, in which she had two children, which she brought up alone. In 1980 she moved to Germany for family reasons, returning to Turkey in 1985.

In 1994 she set up the Konya branch of HADEP She was active for several years as the Provincial Woman Branch Chairwoman of Hadep, until the party was dissolved in 2003. This involved numerous brushes with the law. In 2000 she was arrested during a Hadep demonstration.

She was elected Mayor of Küçükdikili, Adana in the 2004 local elections, when she stood as a candidate for the SHP

In 2006 she was again in trouble with the law as one of the signatories of the ROJ TV petition to the Danish Prime Minister. In October 2007, she was one of five mayors arrested for expressing solidarity with the arrested mayor Osman Keser.