As confirmed by relatives and witnesses, during the raids and mass arrests in the Diyarbakir region on April 25, the following 6 members of the City Theatre of Diyarbakir (Amend Municipal Theatre) were arrested:
– Yavuz Akkuzu
– Elvan Köçer Yıldırım
– Özcan Ateş
– Sena Özbey
– Şahperi Alphan Bayhan
– Sadettin Inal
On 25 April, 19 days before the parliamentary and presidential elections in Turkey, there have been numerous arrests of Kurds in the morning hours. Police arrested more than 100 persons, including journalists, politicians, lawyers, artists and activists in 21 cities and 19 provinces. The raids, which were carried out as part of an investigation based in Diyarbakır, mainly targeted pro-Kurdish organisations.
The Amed Municipal Theatre, Dicle Culture and Art Association, Mezopotamya Culture and Art Association and other theatre institutions were raided and many actors were arrested.
In February, more than 50,000 people died in Diyarbakır in the worst earthquake disaster in recent Turkish history, thousands are missing and hundreds of thousands have been left homeless.
Sources: Bianet.org, Tyatro Yasasin (via Twitter), Frankfurter Rundschau
A report, edited by Pelin Çakır and introduced September 2021 by Martin Roth-Initiative (MRI) and Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen (ifa), Germany, explores risks and restrictions for artistic freedom and mobility beyond the Covid-19 Crisis. By learning from the recent experiences, and particularly from restrictive contexts such as Turkey, Learning from the Pandemic explores how to support artists and maintain spaces of artistic freedom despite these circumstances. The full report is now available in English.
Sources: Full report (English), Summaries: English, Turkish