Türkiye: Kurdish songs and dances are not terrorist propaganda

Summer is here, and it’s wedding season across Turkey. But for some Kurdish men, women and children, joyful dancing and singing of Kurdish political folk songs at weddings or elsewhere has ended in arrest and charges of “spreading terrorist propaganda.” This crime carries a maximum sentence of five years in prison. The authorities’ actions to detain and convict people for such legitimate activities are a clear abuse of their powers of arrest.

On July 26, a TikTok video showing women at a wedding dancing the hare (a common Turkish line dance) to a song that mentioned the guerrillas became the pretext for police to detain six people in the town of Kurtalan in Turkey’s southeastern province of Siirt. The governor of Siirt province issued a statement The court announced the detentions on social media and pledged to “continue to fight terrorist organizations with perseverance and determination.” Two women and three girls were detained by the court. The day before, in the southern city of Mersin, police detained eight men and a boy for dancing to a Kurdish song in a TikTok video a few weeks ago. The court ruled that the nine people should be detained before trial. Arrests in other cities and towns include Istanbul recent Osmaniye Subsequently, at least 34 people were held in pretrial detention for several weeks before appearing in court.

The cases of those arrested in Mersin have not yet been heard, but the three women and two girls in the Kurtalan case will face their first trial in Sirte on August 16. The prosecutor requested the immediate release and acquittal of all five.

The European Court of Human Rights has ruled that singing popular folk songs or Poetry,call out Common sloganincluding Public Meetingsor references to the armed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK)’s 40-year insurgency against the Turkish military are protected speech. The content of the songs and slogans at the wedding party and elsewhere neither incites violence nor poses an imminent danger to individuals that could lead to criminal charges.

The arrests and prosecutions of guests and musicians, turning a Kurdish wedding party into a crime scene, are just the latest examples of how Turkish authorities have, over decades, perverted the criminal justice system to target Kurds’ legitimate activities and political expression.