Around the time Zana's publication appeared, Turkey applied for membership in the European Union (EU), a membership that has been contested partly because of human rights' violations against the Kurdish population in Turkey, the largest minority in Turkey and one denied any recognition. It both criticizes western military and economic interests in Turkey and praises emancipatory qualities of western democracies. Published in England, Writings from Prison is a political/polemic textthat calls for the 'right type' of western involvement in the Middle East, and in particular Turkey.

Zana's persistent attempts to establish a Kurdish voice in Turkey is contributing to a process of equality establishing itself through a Kurdish discourse. Writings from Prison can be read as counter-discursive, written to oppose a violent Turkish nationalist discourse that denies Kurdish parties any participation in Turkish politics. In 1988, she was arrested and severely tortured for her political engagement. She had worked for a human rights association group in Diyarbakir (considered the Kurdish capital), and also as a correspondent to a leftist Kurdish newspaper. Zana had several years of political activity behind her before she was elected to Parliament. In her memoirs Writings from Prison, she relates that, when she took the oath of office in Parliament, she added her own words in Turkish and Kurdish, 'I will work for the fraternal existence of the Turkish and Kurdish people within the context of democracy.' This was the first time a person spoke Kurdish in the Turkish Parliament. Leyla Zana, the first female Kurdish parliamentarian in Turkey, was imprisoned in 1994 after having tried to call attention to the predicament of the Kurdish minority in Turkey for many years.

Writings from Prison by Leyla Zana