Danielle Mitterrand is surrounded on his right Massoud Barzani, on his left Jalal Talabani. Kendal Nezan, far left, said: “In October 2002, we (he and Danielle Mitterrand) crossed all” illegally “the Syrian-Iraqi border, in fact that separating the Kurdish areas of Syria and Iraq, to ​​attend . at the opening of the Kurdish Parliament reunified and inaugurate the François Mitterrand site in Erbil

If France has a Kurdish politician since the 1980s is largely this discreet man who has dedicated her life she has to. Portrait. Slate france report

It welcomes the release Kobané , obviously. Kurd from Turkey, discreet and secret Kendal Nezan playing for forty years a key role in the definition of the Kurdish policy of France. For this, it has long enjoyed the support and complicity of the former First Lady Danielle Mitterrand.

It all started in 1976, Boulevard Saint-Germain in Paris: “François Mitterrand bought his newspapers, I wanted to talk to him about the situation of the Kurds, so I approached and we had coffee together here,” says Kendal then Nezan As we enter the Village Ronsard , where he still has his habits.

That day, the future president of the French Republic says the young man of 27 years that the Kurdish writer Yasar Kemal is one of his favorite authors: “When I had access to his personal library a few years later I saw that he was right, “says Kendal Nezan.

At the time, it is rather Iran and the struggle against the Shah who occupy the Socialist Party . Posted by François Mitterrand, “Kendal came to us with a group of Iranian Kurds he assured translation. He had long curly hair, with blue eyes and bright this one always knows him, remembers Alain Chenal, advisor to the then secretary of the PS to the third world, Lionel Jospin. Kendal speaking Kurds so clear, concrete and developed without using this vocabulary “anti-imperialist” verbose and jargon often used in the Middle East. “

Civilized and cultured man is at once enigmatic and warm. Yet despite a long companionship, those who frequented the halls of the Party and the Socialists to know little Kendal Nezan. “I worked with him for years, and I do not even know where he lives!” exclaims one of them. Could it discreetly, secretiveness or caution Kendal Nezan speaks so little of it? “A policy probably a little outdated, but that fits my life choices,” he said, not really enthusiastic -c is a litote- the idea that devotes a portrait.

A family secret

But the great secret of Kendal Nezan is one of his grandmothers. This is not Kurdish but Armenian, a survivor of the genocide of 1915. While other family members are killed (burned alive, according to a cousin), she and her sister rescued and adopted by a family Kurdish Turkey. This situation is far from being exceptional , it involved several thousand children and all Armenian girls Islamized by force, sometimes acting as servants, before being married to Turks.

If Kendal Nezan never spoke publicly -and rarely that private-grandmother, is that he knew that this information could be used against him and his family -its two brothers living in Sweden, but his mother still lives in Diyarbakir. It happened for example that the Turkish authorities denounced the alleged complicity of the “Armenian terrorists of Asala “with the” Kurdish PKK terrorists. “

Now the taboo of the Armenian grandmothers is largely lifted. Claim such affiliation is even almost become “fashionable” in the southeast, Kurdish, Turkish Armenian -quoique be treated can still assert injury from the Turkish ultra-nationalists.

Rather Maoism Marxism-Leninism

The young Kendal between the only school that has Diyarbakir at the time of the military coup of 1960: “My literature teacher was an artillery officer,” is he recalls. Then he leaves the “Kurdistan of the North” for the Turkish capital, Ankara, in order to attend medical school.

In Turkey, as in France at the time, the far left is divided into multiple streams and chapels. One of the cousins ​​Kendal Nezan directs the student group which adheres Abdullah Ocalan , the future leader of the PKK (Kurdistan Workers’ Party, Marxist-Leninist trend, founded later, in 1978). Very quickly, it is suspected of being an agent of the Turkish services by its comrades in struggle; is the cousin of Kendal Nezan, in person, which would have made his deportation.

But the young Kendal’s more seduced by China as the USSR “If I am not mistaken, in the 1970 Kendal was rather Maoist.; he and my husband had rather lively discussion about it, “says the writer Gilberte Favre-Zaza , a Swiss writer, author of a dozen books and marries another great figure of the Kurdish exile, Noureddine Zaza , who died in 1988.

“May 68, Paris, the revolution …”

A year after the death of his father in 1967, Kendal Nezan decided to study physics at the University of Berkeley, in the United States. The Turkish authorities grant him a scholarship. The young man stopped in France. It will depart more. “It was May 68, Paris, the Revolution …”, he said in a rare exclamation movement, his eyes still filled with images. Paris then had “12 Kurds, at the most …”.

The young man is broke, especially as, soon, the Turkish state wants to recover the money from the purse he has allocated to the student that he guesses he did not have much good to hang on. Kendal Nezan lives frugally, odd jobs. “One day, during one of our walks on the quays of Paris, our young son made ​​a remark about the homeless. Kendal, who has always been very attentive towards children, turns to him and explains that the homeless have received under the bridge when he had nowhere to sleep, “says Gilberte Favre-Zaza .