Gültan Kışanak (born 15 June 1961)[1] is a Kurdish journalist, author and politician from Turkey.

In 1978 Kışanak began studying at the Faculty of Education of Dicle University but was arrested in 1980 and imprisoned in the Diyarbakir Prison for two years.

According to her own account, she was forced to stay in the prison warden's dog kennel for two months because she refused to stand up in his presence.

[8] In 2004 she became a social policy consultant in the Baĝlar Municipality in Diyarbakir and was involved in the Kardelen Women's House in Diyarbakır.

[1] She stood successfully as an independent candidate within the Democratic Society Party (DTP) supported Thousand Hopes alliance in the 2007 parliamentary election in Turkey and became an MP for Diyarbakır.

We are hoping for the democratic forces to come out of these elections much stronger and help to establish the options of democracy dialog and peace.

[16] On October 25, 2016, she was detained together with co-mayor Fırat Anlı[17] which led almost one hundred feminist and LGTB rights organizations to demand her release.

[27] Her daughter discusses her imprisonment in the 2023 film Tearing Walls Down by Şerif Çiçek and Hebûn Polat.