Ilhan Sami Çomak,
Kurdish poet and prisoner of conscience

Kurdish poet Ilhan Sami Çomak is one of Türkiye’s longest-held prisoners of conscience. Join a special event to celebrate his recent release for a powerful evening of poetry and solidarity. Çomak will join the event live via Zoom. 

Kurdish poet Ilhan Sami Çomak was arrested in 1994 at age 22 and was sentenced to death for alleged links to the PKK. After the European Court of Human Rights intervened, his sentence was commuted to prison time. He became Türkiye’s longest-serving prisoner of conscience.

While in prison, Çomak wrote and published eight books of poetry. His literary awards include the prestigious Sennur Sezer Labor and Resistance Poetry Award for his book Geldim Sana (I Came to You) in 2019 and the Metin Altıok Poetry Prize for his collection Hayattayız Nihayet (We Are Alive at Last) in 2022.

After 30 years of unjust imprisonment, Çomak was released in November 2024.

Çomak will join the even tby video from Türkiye. Caroline Stockford, Ilhan’s English translator, will travel from Norway to appear at the event.

Event name: Celebrating Freedom and Poetry
Date: March 26, 2025, 6pm to 8:30pm
Place: Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung, New York Office, 275 Madison Ave., #2114, New York, NY 10016

This poetry reading will do more than celebrate Çomak’s release. It will also launch Words That Walk Through Walls, an anthology of poems that renowned poets wrote to Çomak while he was in prison, and of poems that he wrote in reply.

Acclaimed New York City poets Jeffrey Cyphers Wright, Haleh Liza, Gabriel Don, Jordan E. Franklin, Megumi Kaizu, and Thaddeus Rutkowski will read their poems from the book to support other unjustly imprisoned writers.

The evening will be hosted by Carlos Aquasaco, professor of Latin American Cultural Studies at City College and an influential voice of Hispanic poetry in the United States.

While the exact number of political prisoners in Türkiye is unknown, international human rights organizations have criticized the country for misapplying its anti-terrorism law to imprison political opponents, human rights advocates, journalists, and writers on fabricated charges.

This event is sponsored by the Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung and Pressenza International Press Agency. 

For media inquiries, please contact Jhon Sánchez at
jhon.attorney@gmail.com; telephone 347-385-4621.