“It needs to be understood that in this US backed ‘War on Terror’, schoolchildren, students, poets, musicians, writers, publishers, human rights campaigners, academics, lawyers and artists are all being targeted in a manner that surely must be questioned and opposed,” writes British human rights activist and author Desmond Fernandes in his article, ‘Turkey’s Us Backed ‘War On Terror’: A Cause For Concern?’

As far as musicians are concerned he mentions four examples:

1) A group of students from Nigde University were on trial for separatism and terror, because they watched Kurdish television and listened to Kurdish music.

2) Members of KESK Music Group were charged with having sung in Kurdish during a festival organised by teachers’ union Egitim-Sen in Diyarbakir in 2002, and a court case was restarted on 2 April 2004.

3) In a European Commission 2004 report, it was confirmed that “in March 2004 The Radio and Television Supreme Council ordered the closure for 30 days of ART TV, a local television channel broadcasting from Diyarbakir, on the grounds that it had violated ‘the principle of the indivisibility of the state’ when, in August 2003, it broadcast two Kurdish love songs”.

4) The Radio and Television Supreme Council issued a warning to one tv channel which had shown a music programme with songs in Kurdish. This was based on a provision which prohibits programmes that are ‘in breach of the general principles of the Constitution and national security’.