Kemal Pir

{{Short description|Co-founder of Kurdistan Workers Party (1952–1982)}}

{{Use dmy dates|date=March 2025}}

{{Infobox person

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| birth_name =

| birth_date = {{Birth year|1952}}

| birth_place = Güzeloluk, Gümüşhane Province, Turkey

| death_date = {{Death date and age|df=yes|1982|09|07|1952}}

| death_place = Diyarbakır, Diyarbakır Province, Turkey

| death_cause = Hunger strike

| nationality =

| other_names = Laz Kemal

| alma_mater = Ankara University

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| party = Kurdistan Workers' Party

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Kemal Pir, also known as Laz Kemal (1952 in Güzeloluk, Gümüşhane Province – 7 September 1982 in Diyarbakır, Turkey) was a Laz-Turkish Marxist–Leninist revolutionary and one of the ethnically Laz founders of the Kurdistan Workers' Party.{{cite book |author=Eray Çaylı |chapter=Diyarbakır's "witness sites" and discourses |editor1=Zeynep Gambetti |editor2=Joost Jongerden |title=The Kurdish Issue in Turkey: A Spatial Perspective |year=2015 |publisher=Routledge |isbn=978-1-138-82415-7 |page=84}}

In the early 1970s he studied at Faculty of Literature of Hacettepe University. Influenced by the revolutionary movement led by Abdullah Öcalan, he left the university.{{Cite book |title=Political Violence and Kurds in Turkey: Fragmentations, Mobilizations, Participations & Repertoires |last=Orhan |first=Mehmet |date=2016 |publisher=Routledge|isbn=9781317420439 |page=113|language=en}}

In 1972, living together with Haki Karer in the same house, they received Öcalan after he was released from Mamak prison.{{Cite web|url=http://edepot.wur.nl/245056|title=The Kurdistan Workers Party and a New Left in Turkey: Analysis of the revolutionary movement in Turkey through the PKK's memorial text on Haki Karer|last=Jongerden|first=Joost|date=2012|website=edepot.wur.nl|pages=8–9|access-date=2019-01-16}} At the foundation meeting of the PKK in November 1978, he was elected a member of the central committee.

He was arrested in Batman in 1979 and imprisoned in the Diyarbakir Prison. During his trial he declared that the PKK would begin a peoples revolt when the time was right.{{Cite book|title=Nationalisms and Politics in Turkey: Political Islam, Kemalism and the Kurdish Issue|last1=Casier

|first1=Marlies|last2=Jongerden|first2=Joost|date=2010-09-13|publisher=Routledge|isbn=9781136938672

|pages=131|language=en}} While on hunger strike in prison, he was asked by the head of prison "Don't you love life, Kemal?" and famously answered: "We love life so much we are prepared to die for it."{{cite book|author=Ali Kemal Özcan|title=Turkey's Kurds: A Theoretical Analysis of the PKK and Abdullah Ocalan |year=2006|publisher=Routledge|isbn=0-415-36687-9}} He died due to a hunger strike in 1982.

His nephew Ziya Pir is a politician of the HDP{{Cite news|url=https://www.zeit.de/2015/23/tuerkei-wahl-hdp-ziya-pir/seite-2|title=Türkei-Wahl: Ein Deutscher gegen Erdoğan|last=Topçu|first=Özlem|date=2015-06-18|work=Die Zeit|access-date=2019-01-16|language=de-DE|issn=0044-2070}}