He attended the Ziya Gökalp high school in Diyarbakir and enrolled into the civil engineering department of the Istanbul Technical University from which he graduated in 1979.

[5] On 8 August 1994 he was convicted, together with Leyla Zana, Orhan Doğan and Selim Sadak of membership in an organization (Kurdistan Workers' Party) and sentenced to 15 years in prison.

[3] On 9 June 2004, the 3 prisoners were released after a retrial and pressure from the European Union, but Dicle was still banned from political activity.

This was interpreted by the Ankara 11th High Criminal Court as siding with terrorism, although other commentators have pointed out that the statement was advocating a peaceful solution and that the sentence is evidence of Turkey's curbs on freedom of expression.

[13] He was replaced in the Turkish Parliament by a member of the AK Party, Oya Eronat, who had come sixth in the election, with a much smaller vote.

[14][15] Rıza Türmen, former Turkish Ambassador to the Council of Europe and judge at the European Court of Human Rights, condemned the decision as "not only against universal laws, it also violates national regulation and norms".