Cultural policies and censorship in Turkey were under debate at the Freedom for Art Initiative, held in İstanbul on Saturday. The event gathered filmmakers and academics to address the state’s influence on artistic freedom, focusing particularly on Kurdish cinema.
Filmmaker Kazım Öz spoke about the ongoing challenges faced by Kurdish cinema, which has long been censored. “Kurdish cinema developed alongside Turkish cinema but was never acknowledged. Its language was treated as though it did not exist,” he said. Öz recalled that even films by the internationally renowned Kurdish director Yılmaz Güney were censored simply because they featured the Kurdish identity. “One of Güney’s films was banned because ‘the wheat was too short’ — it was absurd censorship,” he said. He also pointed out the Turkish state’s practice of ‘cross-border censorship’ aimed at limiting Kurdish participation in international film festivals.
Anthropologist Banu Karaca addressed the broader landscape of cultural policies in Turkey, arguing that while it is often claimed that Turkey lacks a coherent cultural policy, the state has in fact developed specific strategies to control the arts. “The government has been crafting its own cultural agenda, particularly since 2017, trying to exert influence over every cultural sector,” Karaca noted.
Art theorist Ezgi Bekçay highlighted the need to reclaim the concept of freedom from neoliberal definitions, arguing that true freedom is rooted in community. “Freedom means being among friends, not isolated individuals,” Bekçay said, stressing the importance of collective cultural expression to counter censorship.
The session concluded with a discussion on the importance of local cultural policies, with participants emphasising that local communities should have the power to shape their own cultural narratives.
