Pervin Buldan

Who is Pervin Buldan?

Pervin Buldan is a Turkish politician of Kurdish origin. She was a member of the former Democratic Society Party in Iğdır, Eastern Turkey. She is President of Yakay-Der.

She grew up and went to school in Hakkâri, and started work as an official in the local government administration department. At the age of 19, she married her cousin Savaş Buldan. The couple moved to Istanbul in 1990, where Pervin Buldan was a full-time housewife. One year later, Pervin’s first child, Necirvan, was born. There, Savaş Buldan became a businessman, and he was claimed to be a drug dealer and PKK financier by the National Intelligence Organization of the Republic of Turkey.

In 1993, their life changed when Prime Minister of Turkey, Tansu Çiller, made a speech declaring that the government had a list of businessmen supporting the Kurdish Workers Party whom they would hold accountable. After that speech, Savas received a series of threatening telephone calls. The period of “killings by unidentified murderers” against businessmen, including Savaş Buldan, began. On 3 June 1994, Pervin’s husband Savaş and his two friends, Adnan Yıldırım and Hacı Karay were abducted by eight policemen after leaving the Hotel Çınar in Yesilköy. The next day their bodies were found in Bolu, at the edge of the river Melen. They carried scars of heavy torture and had been shot in the head.