Young man killed in Ankara for listening to Kurdish music
North-Press Agency
A Kurdish young man was found dead yesterday, Sunday, in a suburb of the Turkish capital Ankara after three Turkish men killed him for listening to Kurdish songs.
The Kurdish agency Mezopotamya in Turkey quoted an unnamed source which said that 20-year-old Barish Chakan was found dead yesterday at 10:30 P.M. in the Etems Kot district of the capital Ankara.
Barish Chakan is from the mainly Kurdish region of Panos in the city of Agri in southeastern Turkey.
According to Mezopotamya, Barish was sitting with his friends in a garden listening to Kurdish songs, and was quickly attacked by three young Turkish men with knives. They stabbed him to death, and the body was taken to a hospital in Ankara.
In the recent period Turkey has witnessed a number of incidents related to art and culture.
Yesterday, Sunday, Turkish police arrested Turkish rapper Bulut Alpman, known as Rota, a day after he published a video clip in which he mocked the son of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Bilal Erdogan. The clip, titled Ağla (“Cry”) shows a person wearing a mask of Bilal Erdogan's face and demonstrating in front of the Istanbul tax office.
The song included a sentence saying: "I will explain to all of you, children, as I explain to Bilal."
Early on Sunday morning, Turkish police attacked the rapper's house, violently beating the door and threatening to break it down, as shown on videos circulated on social media.
Followers suggested that the song was a reference to a 2013 corruption scandal, which broke when a later-deleted audio recording of the senior Erdogan’s voice repeatedly asks Bilal to get rid of millions of dollars of hidden money, while Bilal struggles to understand his father's instructions, was leaked. The Turkish president later claimed that the recordings were fabricated.
Followers claim that the phrase in the song, “As I explain to Bilal,” could suggest a very simple and sarcastic way to explain something that even Bilal could understand.
Music journalist Barish Akpolat shared Rota's new video on Twitter and stated that simply saying "as I explain to Bilal” is not a crime.
This is not the first time that Alpman has been arrested. In March 2019, he was arrested over a different song.