A newly emerged video in social media has showed the moment two police officers briefly detain two youngsters for singing Kurdish songs at the Taksim Square in İstanbul.
In the 8-second video, posted by a Twitter user named Elif Demirtaş and viewed and retweeted hundreds of times, police officers are seen stopping the youngsters from playing musical instrument and the rush to disperse the crowd around.
One of the officers is also heard saying: “It is forbidden to sign a Kurdish song here.”
A similar incident happened last year in August when fourteen people, including two children, have been detained over singing Kurdish songs at an İstanbul park.
According to Cumhuriyet daily, a group of Kurdish people were singing songs on Aug. 7 at a park in İstanbul’s Esenyurt district until a group of police officers then intervened and detained them all.
Two children were later released, but 12 of the group were jailed pending trial.
Mazlum Metin, one of the detained told prosecutor that he and his friends sang one song in Turkish and two Kurdish songs. After a while, a group of police officers arrived at the park after getting a call. The group was chanting “Kurdistan will be a grave for Turkish Republic,” the indictment claimed, elaborating about the charges against the detainees.
The group rejects the charge. Prosecutor cited police report and ‘silence of the detainees’ as evidence about the charge.
Gamze Sarıyel, lawyer of the accused young people, said police already made up their decision after examining ID cards of singing group at the park.
“The police came to park and looked at the IDs of them, and saw Diyarbakir as hometown in eight IDs. Police then was heard saying as ‘These guys are certainly terrorists’,” Sarıyel told Cumhuriyet daily.
Esenyurt is a district in Istanbul and is home to large number of Kurdish migrants who moved from Turkey’s southeast, a region hit by bloody conflict between outlwaed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) militants and the Turkish security forces, seeking safety and peace in Istanbul.
Detainees complained about mistreatment at police hands and said they were subjected to police beating both at the park and in detention. (turkeypurge.com)
Istiklal'de Kürtçe șarkı söyleyen gençlere polisler müdahale edip müziği durdu. "Burda Kürtçe șarkı söylemek yasak"Gel arkadaș,Fașizme gel! pic.twitter.com/o8QpGOOmlp
— Elif Demirtaş (@elfaleyla) July 29, 2017
