She began studying at the Faculty of Education of Dicle University in 1978 but was arrested in 1980 and was imprisoned in the Diyarbakir Prison for two years. According to her own account, she had to stay in the dog kennel of the prison warden for two months because she refused to stand up in his presence.[3] She began studying journalism at Ege University, Izmir, in 1986. On the 16 March 1988 she was arrested while protesting Saddam Hussein's attack on Halabja.