After the 6th of May 1996 when the Turkish Military Intelligence attempted an assassination of Kurdish leader, Abdullah Ocalan in Syria, Zeynep Kinaci (Zilan), took the decision to avenge this attempt and also protest against the Turkish regime’s savage and 'dirty war' against the Kurdish people in Turkey, which was being hidden from the outside world.
She turned herself into a human bomb and on 30 June 1996, walked onto a Turkish military parade in Dersim, amongst the occupying forces of her country, Kurdistan, and ignited the bomb killing around 10 Turkish soldiers and seriously wounding another 44. Before she took this action she wrote three letters to President Abdullah Ocalan, the Kurdish people, and her female comrades. In one of the letters she says: "The enemy wages a total war against us. Our answer must be total resistance in the struggle for our freedom."

The following letter is the one she wrote to the people of Kurdistan and the revolutionary public.

In the history of any people, there are important events that have changed the fate of that people. The French Bourgeois revolution, the Russian Bolshevik Revolution, the Islamic Revolution are great events that not only have great effects on the history of the people, but also shaped and affected the entire history of humanity. There have been leaders in the history of all people that have left their mark on history. Alexander the Great, Lenin and Muhammed are a few of these. With their practices, they became the leaders of important processes being lived in both their own people and the entire history of humanity.
When we look at Kurdish history, we see that the Kurdish history has always been written to their disadvantage. The history of the Kurds is the history of decline. The people of Kurdistan, who had an important position on the stage of history in the primitive communal societies and the slave-owning period, and were very active among the peoples, lost their freedom after they came under the domination of the Persians and could not protect their will from hegemony ever again. The Kurdish people have lived under the rule of dominant nations for thousands of years and the land of Kurdistan has been the war zone of these nations. While the other peoples have made a historic progress more or less according to their situation, the Kurdish people have followed far behind and their social development has remained very primitive.

The Kurds have risen up many times for the liberation of their homeland, however the lack of sufficient leadership, internal betrayal, and lack of organization rendered these uprisings ineffective. The defeat of the Seyh Sait and Dersim Rebellions in the near history are good examples of this. Our people have lost not only their homeland, but also all their national feeling, language, heart and brain to the enemy. The "divide and conquer" policy of the rulers, integrated with special warfare, has been applied to our people in a very ugly way, causing the national extinction of "white death". Betrayal and resistance have always been intertwined, internal betrayals have always tried to overshadow the resistance, and most of them have had success over time.

The historical decline has been stopped with the offical declaration of the PKK in 27 November 1978. Kurdistan is being depopulated, thousands of our people have been murdered, the contra forces use so-called “unknown perpetrator” attacks to destroy our people. The state tries to make our survivors feel the breath of death in every moment. Our people have been put through torture, and many of them have been returned dead from interrogations which they were taken into alive. In these days, in which the war is at its most anggressive moment, our Party PKK creates developments, strength and growth within itself day by day and brings victory closer by striking more effectively and determinedly. While our guerrilla forces, that become an army, inflict casualties on the enemy, our front ERNK has spread  all over the world organizing our people.  The  Kurdish people, who are one body and one fist, take their place in the struggle by participating more and more each and every day by neutralizing all the special war policies carried out by the enemy. With the announcement of the Kurdistan Exile Parliament and the establishment of national alliances, it progresses step by step towards the establishment of people's power. We are paying heavy prices, because against us there are the forces of the Turkish state and the imperialist forces which support them. But we, as the Kurdish people have for the first time became so strenghtened, have became so patriotic, come so close to becoming a nation and to freedom. We are for the first time so honoured, we are no longer ashamed of ourselves. We can look at the face of all humanity with pride. Because finally we are fighting for our freedom. It is necessary to protect the tradition of resistance initiated by our great comrades Mazlum, Kemal, Hayri, Ferhat, Zekiye, Berivan, Bêritan and Ronahi. Each of these comrades is a turning point in the successful development of our struggle, which has gone down in history and is the symbol of legendary resistances. It is necessary to take responsibility over this great tradition.

To show my commitment to our party the PKK, our Leader APO, our great resistance fighters, our prison resistance fighters, to our comrades who are fighting for freedom in the mountains, my country and my people I will carry out this “sacrificial action”. With this action, I will attack the enemy with the spirit and strength that I take from my people. This shouldn't be the fate of our people any more. We are the ones with the most love for peace, brotherhood, love itself, humanity, nature and life. Its this love that forces us to fight. We neither want to die or to kill. But there is no other way to achieve our freedom. The guilty ones of this war are the imperialist powers and their servant the Turkish state. Staying silent on this is the biggest crime. If you see this blood flowing before your eyes and stay silent, you are the most guilty. I call upon all of humanity!  If you don't want to participate in this crime, give solidarity to the Kurdish people. Clean the rust from your brains and hearts that imperialism has created and listen to a people's screams  for freedom.  There is brotherhood in this voice, there are human virtues, there is friendship.

My dear patriotic people!
With this action, I try to become the voice of your hearts. We, thousands of your children that are fighting in the mountains, are ready to die not only once, but ready to die thousands of times  for your free future. In these fiercest days of our war, you too must make your position clear. The name of this war is People’s war. Let us fulfill the requirements of the people's war. There is a phrase; “the tree of freedom is watered with blood.” You should not abandon your freedom easily. It should be made clear that our homeland is very valuable. This is why the enemy is so persistent. Why are we not so tenacious? What more than our lives can we lose? We should prefer an honorable death to a dishonorable life. I greet you with my belief that as we, in this process, get ever closer to freedom, our people will continue to protect the legacy of resistance initiated by the PKK, that they will continue to pay the prices that they have already paid, and that they will take their honorable place in the world societies by creating a free tomorrow with their own hands.

Down with Imperialism, Colonialism and all kinds of Backwardness!
Long live the reality of our peoples army !
Long live president APO!