HyperAllergic

Theater Ensemble Targeted in Turkey for Kurdish Performances; Accused
of “Terrorist Propaganda”

By Ayla Jean Yackley
Feb. 18, 2021

ŞANLIURFA, Turkey — What gets a 40-year-old Italian comedy about a
cosmetic surgery mishap banned from the stage? Performing the play in
Kurdish in Turkey, a theater troupe discovered.

Police raided a municipal theater in Istanbul last autumn, just hours
before Teatra Jiyana Nû, the city’s oldest Kurdish-language ensemble,
was to stage Nobel Prize-winning Dario Fo’s 1981 farce Trumpets and
Raspberries. Officers accused the actors of threatening public order.

Another performance was halted in the city of Şanlıurfa in the
country’s predominantly Kurdish southeast in November, and Teatra
Jiyana Nû canceled the rest of the run, anticipating more bans.

“The government views us as political because we believe that the
almost 20 million Kurds living in Turkey have the right to experience
theater in their own language,” said actor Cihad Ekinci, who plays a
surgeon in the adaption called Bêrû (Faceless in Kurdish).

In a country where Turkish is the only official language, speaking
Kurdish is sometimes seen as an act of rebellion. Teatra Jiyana Nû, or
New Life Theater, has struggled to find stages to perform its
repertoire, which includes original works and classics by Bertolt
Brecht and Neil Simon. Though cast members have been detained and
faced police intimidation outside venues, it has managed to perform
Bêrû in a handful of Turkish cities, as well as at festivals in Russia
and Germany, since 2017.

“This was the first time Kurdish theater was given space in the
repertory of the City Theaters — an official, public institution — and
that is what provoked this reaction,” Ekinci told Hyperallergic.


Authorities insist that theater in Kurdish is permissible if it avoids
“terrorist propaganda,” and vowed to investigate whether Teatra Jiyana
Nû acted as a mouthpiece for the armed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK).
But the play — a lighthearted critique of capitalism written before
the PKK even existed — has been staged in Turkish at public theaters.
The company denies links with the outlawed group, which has waged a
36-year insurgency at the cost of 40,000 lives.

Teatra Jiyana Nû’s travails are part of a broader crackdown that has
not spared the culture community since a peace process with the
militants collapsed in 2015; Erdoğan fended off a military coup the
following year and pivoted to a strident strain of nationalism.

Writers, actors, and scholars are among the tens of thousands of
people in jail as a result. Osman Kavala, a prominent arts benefactor
who supported dialogue between Kurds and Turks, has been incarcerated
for more than three years without a conviction.

“Anti-democratic measures once used solely against Kurds now affect
almost every part of Turkish society,” Ekinci said.

Yet Kurds have borne the brunt of the government’s ire.
Kurdish-language newspapers, broadcasters, even a children’s cartoon
network have been banned. Kurdish artist Zehra Doğan now lives in
exile after nearly three years in jail for painting scenes of military
operations against the PKK.

Thousands of Kurdish activists have been imprisoned, including
politician Selahattin Demirtaş, the former leader of Turkey’s
second-biggest opposition party. Almost every mayor elected from his
party has been replaced with a state-appointed trustee, and their city
theaters have all been shuttered.

Speaking Kurdish has long been perilous in Turkey, where the language
— the mother tongue of as many as 40 million people worldwide — was
illegal until 1991. Four Kurdish lawmakers were jailed for a decade
after taking their oath of office in Kurdish that year.

In the ensuing decades, restrictions eased, and Erdoğan expanded some
rights for Turkey’s largest minority to woo Kurdish voters. He
launched a state TV channel in 2009 that continues to broadcast in
Kurdish.

Yet Kurdish language and literature programs at universities have been
stymied, and independent schools banned, including Istanbul’s
influential Kurdish Institute, which taught thousands after opening in
1992.

The institute’s founder, Musa Anter, is credited as Turkey’s first
Kurdish-language playwright with 1965’s Birîna Reş (Black Wound),
initially performed secretly in basements. Anter was assassinated in
1992 at the age of 72 by unidentified gunmen.

“The Kurdish issue is a state security policy, and since our language
is part of the issue, it too is under pressure,” said linguist Zana
Farqini, who ran the Kurdish Institute, in an interview with
Hyperallergic. “Turkey tells the world Kurdish isn’t banned, but in
truth the state has been largely successful in making Kurdish
invisible again, [and] Kurds have withdrawn into their shells, afraid
to explore their culture.”

This has deprived a generation of art in parts of the country where
Kurdish is the primary language, Mevlüt Güneş, a lawyer in Şanlıurfa,
told Hyperallergic. There, most Kurds over the age of 40 did not
complete enough schooling to master Turkish, and many are illiterate,
he said.

“For them, communication is spoken or visual. You can put my mother in
a room full of books, and she won’t understand a thing. Theater is one
of the few ways she can access culture,” he said.

Bêrû was supposed to provide lawyers with comic relief during the
coronavirus pandemic, but police arrived at Güneş’ bar association
with a summons saying the actors were under investigation for
belonging to a terrorist organization, and the show could not go on.

It is unclear when the ensemble will take the stage; besides the
looming terrorism probe, theaters across Turkey closed in December as
COVID-19 cases peaked.

But it’s not lights out for Teatra Jiyana Nû, which is working on a
new play based on the real-life arrest of a cast member when he
stepped into the wings during a performance in the 1990s. The comedy
of errors includes the other actors’ attempts to prolong the epic to
avoid their own arrest.

“The finale may not be very funny, but it will offer hope. This is
Kurds’ story: There is comedy in our tragedy,” Ekinci said.