An opposition-run municipality has cancelled a concert by dissident Turkish singer Suavi in Turkey’s conservative heartland of Konya upon a request by far-right ultranationalist group the Grey Wolves, citing “national sensitivities,” Turkish minute reported, citing the local news website Seydişehir’in Sesi.
The Grey Wolves are seen as the paramilitary wing of Turkey’s far-right Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), an ally of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) government.
Suavi’s lawyer, Bişar Abdi Alınak, announced on X that the concert scheduled to take place in Seydişehir on August 30 to mark Turkish Victory Day was canceled unilaterally by the Seydişehir Municipality, run by the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP).
Alınak accused Seydişehir Mayor Hasan Ustaoğlu of “toeing the line” with the “bigoted” mentality of the Grey Wolves and encouraging them.
Akın Bozkurt, leader of the Grey Wolves’s branch in Seydişehir, told Seydişehir’in Sesi that the concert was canceled after negotiations with the municipality and said the event, scheduled as part of celebrations for Victory Day, “does not comply with our national sensitivities.”
Kemalettin Atalay, chairman of the ruling AKP in the district, and the MHP’s district chairman, Kadir Kocabaş, also criticized the scheduled concert and requested that the event be canceled, according to the report.
The CHP-run municipality was criticized by many in the AKP over its decision to cancel Suavi’s concert, with exiled journalist Can Dündar saying the municipality has “failed to withstand the pressure.”
“If you can’t stand behind him, why are you inviting Suavi [to give a concert]?” journalist İsmail Saymaz said, addressing the CHP-run municipality.
Eren Keskin, a prominent Kurdish lawyer and human rights activist, also said the municipality’s decision to cancel the concert makes them no different than those who target Suavi and try to prevent him from performing.
The development comes after the dissident singer was attacked by a group of protesters shouting, “We don’t want terrorists in Beykoz,” during a concert in İstanbul’s Beykoz district on Monday, after he was targeted by the MHP’s Beykoz district administration in a statement.
Suavi told the Birgün daily that the attack was not the result of a personal dispute but rather should be considered one of the planned attacks on Turkey’s dissidents, which makes him feel “uneasy and uncomfortable.”
“We seem to be heading towards a period when we, the dissident singers, are seriously being targeted. If we do not understand and control this situation from the right angle, we may experience worse things as a country in the future,” Suavi added.
Known as an outspoken critic of the AKP government, Suavi blamed the government for the devastating results of the magnitude 7.8 and 7.5 earthquakes that struck 11 provinces in Turkey’s south and southeast on February 6, 2023, leaving more than 53,000 people dead and hundreds of thousands injured or displaced.
The singer, who was spending the night at a hotel following a concert in Diyarbakır when the earthquakes struck, went to Antakya, one of the places hardest-hit by the earthquakes, to join relief work there and actively took part in efforts to help the victims.
Following the earthquakes, President Erdoğan and his AKP government were accused of failing to prepare the country for earthquakes during their 20 years in power and poor performance in coordinating search and rescue efforts, mainly failing to mobilize enough people and a lack of coordination among the teams, which resulted in civilians in some regions trying to pull their loved ones from under the rubble themselves and finding them frozen to death although they had sustained no critical injuries in the collapse.
