Nûdem Durak
Nûdem Durak is a Kurdish folk musician and political prisoner from Turkey.
Durak worked as a music teacher in the town of Cizre in South East Turkey at the Memuzin Cultural Centre.[1] Durak was arrested in 2015 and sentenced to ten and a half years in jail for 'terrorist propaganda', due to the political nature of her music. Durak told Al-Jazeera before her imprisonment that “Singing in Kurdish is my heritage from my ancestors… my only crime is making art.”[2] She had first been arrested in 2009, and imprisoned for 8 months before being released.[3]
In July 2016, Durak's prison sentence was increased from 10.5 to 19 years, with no additional charges brought against her. She is held in Type E Closed Prison in Mardin, Turkey. She is due for release in 2034.[4]
In 2020, an international campaign calling for her release was started by Angela Davis, Noam Chomsky, Ken Loach, David Graeber, Peter Gabriel and Roger Waters, among other well known leftist cultural figures.[5][6] She has complained of torture, isolation, and having her guitar broken by prison officers.[7]
References
- ^ "Meet the Kurdish woman imprisoned for singing in Turkey". america.aljazeera.com. Retrieved 2020-09-17.
- ^ Glynn, Sarah (2020-05-22). "Freedom's song: Solidarity with the Grup Yorum musicians in Turkey's prisons". Green Left. Retrieved 2020-09-17.
- ^ "Kurdish musician in Turkey sentenced to 10 years in prison for singing in Kurdish - Opinion - Jerusalem Post". web.archive.org. 2015-11-10. Retrieved 2020-09-17.
- ^ "Nûdem Durak". voiceproject.org. Retrieved 2020-09-17.
{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link) - ^ "International campaign for Kurdish musician jailed in Turkey". ANF News. Retrieved 2020-09-17.
- ^ "Internationale Kampagne für Musikerin Nûdem Durak". ANF News (in German). Retrieved 2020-09-17.
- ^ "« Nûdem Durak n'avait pas d'armes sinon une guitare »". Le Monde.fr (in French). 2020-05-22. Retrieved 2020-09-17.