Mehmet İhsan Arslan (born 1 January 1948 in Sason) is a Turkish businessman and politician of Kurdish origin, a founding member of the deputy for the Justice and Development Party (AKP) and also a former member of the Grand National Assembly of Turkey He was a part-owner of the Zaman newspaper, and in the 1990s was Vice-President of the Islamist human rights organization Mazlum-Der. As such he was involved into the negotiations with the Kurdistan Workers' Party to achieve a release of captive Turkish soldiers and was shortly detained for this. He was elected to the Turkish parliament as a representative of Diyarbakir for the pro-Kurdish Democratic People's Party (DEHAP) in the parliamentarian elections of 2002. He later was involved in the founding of the AKP and in the parliamentary elec