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Kur­dish musi­cian and singer Nûdem Durak is one among the regime’s hostages in Turkey, served up as an example.

In France, when we use the word “hostage”, we are express­ly refer­ring to a very somber peri­od in the his­to­ry of the 20th cen­tu­ry, when fas­cism ter­ror­ized attempts at resis­tance by tak­ing “hostages”, pre­cise­ly  “for exem­plar­i­ty”. This reached a parox­ysm with the Affiche Rouge (Red Poster).

In a so-called “democ­ra­cy”,  a sen­tence of impris­on­ment is pro­nounced in order to remove from soci­ety, tem­porar­i­ly or for a longer peri­od, a per­son for, we are told, pub­lic secu­ri­ty rea­sons. The sen­tence is indi­vid­u­al­ized and pro­nounced by a judi­cia­ry, the­o­ret­i­cal­ly inde­pen­dent,  with a sen­tence pro­por­tion­ate to the crime or offence com­mit­ted and pun­ish­able by law. You are of course famil­iar with these basic ele­ments of law to which a num­ber of Con­sti­tu­tions refer. Acces­so­ri­ly, the lev­el of the sen­tence is meant as a dis­sua­sive fea­ture, although this ele­ment of com­mu­ni­ca­tion, dear to par­ti­sans of the death penal­ty, is not a ele­ment of Law. Sen­tenc­ing “as an exam­ple” is not a judi­cial matter.

Yet in Turkey, tri­bunals under orders do noth­ing else as soon as the mat­ter involves polit­i­cal oppo­nents. The accu­sa­tion accom­pa­ny­ing these reg­u­lar episodes of hostage tak­ing usu­al­ly refer to “ter­ror­ism” and to “attacks on the State’s integrity”.

Obtain­ing a reli­able fig­ure on the glob­al num­ber of polit­i­cal pris­on­ers offi­cial­ly incar­cer­at­ed in Turkey is still dif­fi­cult. Even reports issued by the Euro­pean Coun­cil do not draw a dis­tinc­tion with fig­ures of com­mon law con­victs. This would amount to con­sid­er­ing the accu­sa­tion of “ter­ror­ism” as a polit­i­cal cat­e­go­ry and hence would be deemed an “intru­sion”.

Orga­ni­za­tions defend­ing human rights in Turkey speak of sev­er­al tens of thou­sands among  some 300 000 of those incar­cer­at­ed1These fig­ures include per­sons con­demned to long sen­tences in the same man­ner by pre­ced­ing Kemal­ist regimes. Most of them are of Kur­dish ori­gin, the oth­ers orig­i­nat­ing from purges fol­low­ing the attempt­ed coup d’E­tat in July 20162. In pris­ons, the aver­age is of 375 per 100 000 inhab­i­tant, know­ing that the Turk­ish pop­u­la­tion is of 82 mil­lion peo­ple.  As a com­par­i­son, in France which sits at the mid-range in clas­si­fi­ca­tions, the fig­ure (in marked increase)  stands at 106 pris­on­ers per 100 000 inhabitants.

Let’s look at jour­nal­ists as an exam­ple. In ear­ly 2021, 80 jour­nal­ists were in prison, 93 were await­ing judg­ment, 167 were con­sid­ered “want­ed by the judi­cia­ry”. Con­trary to the prac­tice by some spe­cial­ized orga­ni­za­tions, these fig­ures include all those work­ing as jour­nal­ists, whether hold­ers of the offi­cial Turk­ish gov­ern­ment accred­i­ta­tion or not. These fig­ures in them­selves show how the regime has forced over one hun­dred of them into exile, how, by end­less­ly drag­ging out those tri­als, it con­demns oth­ers to silence and social death, and how it releas­es or re-incar­cer­ates oth­ers,  per­ma­nent­ly. Here again, we see the use of a pol­i­cy of ter­ror through exemplarity…

Intel­lec­tu­als, politi­cians, jour­nal­ists are behind bars, but more often than not, those arrest­ed are sim­ply per­sons aware of their rights, and hav­ing attempt­ed to defend them in the face of a State claim­ing a dom­i­nant and exclu­sive Turci­ty, This may include shep­herds, peas­ants, vil­lagers whose native tongue tar­get­ed them as belong­ing to a com­mu­ni­ty “that was sus­cep­ti­ble of claim­ing its rights”, thus attack­ing the State, arrest­ed as “accom­plices to ter­ror­ism” the minute they enter into resistance.

Zehra Doğan, who spent close to three years in the gaols in Turkey for a draw­ing which, accord­ing to the judge “went beyond the lim­its of art and of crit­i­cism”, described in her “let­ters from prison” a cer­tain num­ber of her polit­i­cal co-detainees; women arrest­ed and con­demned for act­ing in resis­tance to Turci­ty. Dur­ing her first incar­cer­a­tion, pri­or to her defin­i­tive tri­al, she was a cell­block com­pan­ion of  Nûdem Durak in 2016 in the Mardin prison.

Nûdem Durak is not the only artist imprisoned.

We can also men­tion the case of Dilan Cûdi Saruhan, anoth­er exam­ple Kedis­tan has brought up.

So, why Nûdem Durak, and why now?

This is a legit­i­mate ques­tion. Why put for­ward this per­son or that oth­er, rather than the thou­sands of others?

Some­times the answer is very sim­ple: because we know the per­son, because we have links with the fam­i­ly or close friends, because the per­son has made her­self or him­self known by spe­cif­ic forms of resis­tance, or sim­ply through strength and talent.

This is how we were more than active in our sup­port for Aslı Erdoğan and Zehra Doğan.

Nat­u­ral­ly, we stand with the “Free Nûdem Durak” cam­paign that has car­ried on for over a year now, against winds, tides and…criticism. Even if our team is made up of per­sons from dif­fer­ent hori­zons — Kur­dis­tan, France, Turkey, Québec, Basque Country…solidarity can­not be shut­tered nor does it rec­og­nize borders.

Inter­na­tion­al “Free Nûdem Durak” campaign
Face­book | Twit­ter | Insta­gram | YouTube | Fundrais­ing

Are there chances of such a campaign leading to immediate liberation?

Think­ing in those terms would show a clear mis­un­der­stand­ing of the nature of the regime in Turkey. Equal­ly, think­ing that noth­ing else can be done oth­er than a denun­ci­a­tion in prin­ci­ple, even a repeat­ed one, means for­get­ting to pro­vide sup­port to an incar­cer­at­ed per­son, and with her, to her co-detainees, and in doing so, coun­ter­ing the regime’s attempts at break­ing resis­tance, through its pol­i­cy of incar­cer­a­tion as an exam­ple. It also pro­vides invalu­able moral sup­port for the per­son and her co-detainees.

Thus, cor­re­spond­ing when­ev­er pos­si­ble, allow­ing vis­its, improv­ing dai­ly con­di­tions, each of these ges­tures is at least as use­ful as even the angri­est denun­ci­a­tions on inter­net or else­where. Pro­vid­ing link­ages between var­i­ous sol­i­dar­i­ties also proves beneficial.

This is why there is need for fund­ing at “Free Nûdem Dru­ak”. Not for the col­lec­tive itself, which is total­ly staffed on a vol­un­teer basis, but in order to allow vis­its from close ones and fam­i­ly, to pur­sue legal recours­es, to improve dai­ly con­di­tions in prison.

Kedis­tan mag­a­zine being estab­lished on a French 1901 asso­ci­a­tion, has thus accept­ed to pro­vide the logis­tics insur­ing trans­paren­cy to the giving.

This is why we relay here their appeal for Nûdem, and invite all of those  among you who can, to help at their side, along with us.

It’s our turn to pro­vide sup­port for Nûdem Durak, as an example!

 

In order to write to Nûdem :

Nûdem Durak
M Tipi Kapalı Kadın Cezaevi
Bay­burt TURKEY

And to write to some of the others…

You will find a list HERE.

Translation by Renée Lucie Bourges
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