Conference session abstract
In July 2003 singer and human rights activist Ferhat Tunç was sentenced to three months in prison. This was not the first time the Turkish authorities had made life difficult for Ferhat Tunç.

Besides this rare chance to hear the testimony of Ferhat Tunç, the session will also highlight other cases of music censorship in Turkey and will discuss the prospects for freedom of musical expression. As the harassment and censorship of Kurdish musicians continues, many human rights advocates in Turkey feel Ankara still has a long way to go to meet European Union standards on minorities.

Şanar Yurdatapan recently contributed to the Freemuse-edited book ‘Shoot the Singer! Music Censorship Today’ (Zed Books, May 2004) – the world’s first survey on music censorship globally – which will be presented at the session.

Date and venue: Friday 29 October 2004, 4 – 4:45 pm, WOMEX, Essen, Germany.

Şanar Yurdatapan became famous as a composer and songwriter during the 1970s. Yurdatapan has been imprisoned three times and endlessly harassed. Following the military coup of 1980, he left Turkey and had to live in exile for eleven years. He returned to Turkey in 1991. Yurdatapan is the spokesperson for Initiative for Freedom of Expression – a civil disobedience action group.

Ferhat Tunç was born in Tunceli (Dersim) 1964. Lived in Germany between 1982 and 1985 where he met Darnel Sumers and worked together, combining the taste of traditional (modal) Kurdish music and western (harmonic) sounds. Since his return to Turkey in 1985 he released 13 albums, mainly protesting the oppression of Kurdish people, language and culture.