Exiled Turkish writer Aslı Erdoğan shared a message of support for the imprisoned Kurdish singer Nûdem Durak, calling her imprisonment a “cruel and tyrannical policy of repression” by the Turkish state.
Nûdem Durak was jailed for performing Kurdish political songs in 2015, an act which prosecutors said was evidence that she was a member of a terrorist organisation. Durak was handed a 19 year jail sentence.
In May 2020, prominent artists and celebrities including musician Roger Waters, actor Mark Ruffalo and scholar Noam Chomsky joined an international campaign of solidarity for Nûdem Durak.
Aslı Erdoğan, an Erich Maria Remarque Peace Prize-winning Turkish author, added her own message of support to the campaign via the @NudemDurak Twitter account.
“A country that imprisons its writers has lost all connection with reality; when it imprisons its musicians, it also consumes its dreams,” Erdoğan said. “Nûdem has been in prison for seven years because she persisted in singing in Kurdish, because she said ‘I EXIST and I want to continue to exist’… She is about to lose her voice… And so are we!”
Erdoğan has faced her own criminal charges in Turkey, where she was arrested for ‘membership of a terrorist organisation’ and ‘undermining national unity’ during a wave of repression after a failed coup attempt in 2016.
The writer was imprisoned for four months that year, before being released pending trial. The charges against the writer relate to her work writing for the pro-Kurdish Özgür Gündem newspaper, which was shuttered by court order in 2016.
Erdoğan fled to Germany after her travel ban was lifted in 2017, and continues to live there in exile.