Hurriyet Daily News, Turkey
Aug 12 2009

Ethnicity, Kurdish songs prevent Tigran’s burial, says DTP deputy

Wednesday, August 12, 2009
DÄ°YARBAKIR ` DoÄ?an News Agency

DTP Diyarbakır deputy DemirtaÅ? says it is a shame that
Tigran’s body was kept waiting for five days in Athens.

Famous singer-songwriter Aram Tigran’s background as a Greek citizen
of Armenian origin who sang in Kurdish has created the problems in
fulfilling his final wish to be buried in Diyarbakır, a
pro-Kurdish deputy said Wednesday.

Tigran, who died in Athens on Saturday from a brain hemorrhage, is
seen as one of the key figures in Kurdish music, but he also sang and
wrote songs in Arabic, Armenian, Greek, Syriac and Turkish. The singer
was born in 1934 in Bianda village, in the southeastern province of
Batman, before his family moved to the Syrian town of Qaliseli. He
started playing the ud, a stringed instrument, at the age of 9. Over
his lifetime, he wrote more than 100 songs in Kurdish and Armenian and
had a repertoire of 435 songs in various regional languages.

Despite singing in Kurdish for most of his life, Tigran only saw
Diyarbakır for the first time in May 2008, when he attended the
Diyarbakır Culture and Art Festival and spent two months in the
region. Tigran’s wish was to be buried in the southeastern province of
Diyarbakır, and the city’s metropolitan municipality has
mobilized its resources to try and fulfill that request.

The pro-Kurdish Democratic Society Party, or DTP’s, Diyarbakır
deputy Selahattin DemirtaÅ? said it was a shame that Tigran’s
body was kept waiting for five days in Athens. DemirtaÅ? made
his remarks at a press conference in Diyarbakır with DTP deputy
Aysel TuÄ?luk and Diyarbakır Mayor Osman Baydemir, He
said senior officials’ constant praising of the land’s rich cultural
heritage while creating bureaucratic obstacles preventing Tigran’s
burial in Diyarbakır was a thought-provoking contradiction.

Approval from the interior, foreign and culture ministries are
necessary for the burial of a foreign citizen in Turkey.

People expected that the government would be more supportive, said
DemirtaÅ?, adding that if Tigran was not buried in
Diyarbakır, the DTP would hold commemorative ceremonies and the
family would bury the singer in Brussels.

Baydemir said Tigran had many fans in the city and that the
municipality had prepared for the burial. `We want to bid our final
farewell to Aram Tigran the way he deserved,’ he said

The mayor said they still hoped the obstacles would be overcome to
Tigran being buried in Diyarbakır, but added, `It is impossible
to keep a body waiting for an undetermined amount of time.’