The young Kur­dish singer, accused by Ankara of “ter­ror­ist” com­plic­i­ty, was impris­oned almost four years ago: a sen­tence that was sup­posed to end in 2034.


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Nine­teen years: not an age, but a prison sen­tence. Last month, Nûdem Durak was placed in soli­tary con­fine­ment. Dis­ci­pli­nary sanc­tion. This means noth­ing, of course: the lan­guage of the AKP lies as it pre­vents oth­ers from breath­ing. “Being cap­tive is not the issue / It’s about not sur­ren­der­ing / That’s it”, one pris­on­er wrote in the late 1940s, anoth­er, we’re talk­ing about the Turk­ish poet Nâzım Hik­met. It is nec­es­sary, from the imag­i­na­tion, to take the mea­sure of these three vers­es when one lives in the open air; they have the sound slam­ming of a very crazy evidence.

The last image we have of her comes from the sum­mer of 2018: we see eight women, feet in the snow of what must be the yard of the pen­i­ten­tiary that holds them in north­east­ern Turkey. Nûdem Durak is one of those women, and she smiles, with a smile that is so broad that she has to give it back to him. His expres­sion embod­ies this word of the poet that French trans­lates as “here,” that lit­tle word, almost poor in spir­it, but incom­men­su­rable as soon as it has the sil­hou­ette of Hik­met or the smile of Durak.

The cap­tive, about 30 years old, has attached a let­ter to this pho­to­graph, addressed to her sup­port com­mit­tee. “As the days go by, the con­di­tions become more and more dif­fi­cult, our liv­ing space becomes nar­row­er and nar­row­er. Our fun­da­men­tal rights, to which we are legal­ly enti­tled, such as the right to vis­it, the right to tele­phone, the right to receive a let­ter, etc., are vio­lat­ed”. The man­age­ment of the estab­lish­ment seized the last musi­cal instru­ment that it pos­sess­es, a drum. Because Nûdem Durak is a singer. The page is sat­u­rat­ed with black words, tight, that an admin­is­tra­tive stamp does not fail to foul.

Durak has already spent six months in a cell, in 2009, dur­ing the wave of arrests that hit the coun­try in the “KCK case”, the name of the group in charge of fed­er­at­ing all Kur­dish rev­o­lu­tion­ary par­ties in the region. Then one year, in 2012. Before being arrest­ed on April 22, 2015, while she went to some com­mune in the south of the coun­try. Offi­cial rea­sons? Par­tic­i­pa­tion in vio­lent demon­stra­tions, pro­pa­gan­da and even recruit­ment of guer­ril­las on behalf of the Kur­dis­tan Work­ers’ Par­ty, the PKK, con­sid­ered “ter­ror­ist” by Turkey and the Euro­pean Union. “They said”, said her sis­ter, “that she is a senior exec­u­tive at KCK, the largest orga­ni­za­tion above the PKK. It’s a lie. Every­one knows the names of KCK man­age­ment”. When he does not invade north­ern Syr­ia along­side Islamist mer­ce­nar­ies, the Erdoğan regime makes it a spe­cial­ty to embassy oppo­nents, jour­nal­ists, writ­ers and human rights activists: to man­u­fac­ture the evi­dence – a sim­ple for­mal­i­ty. “They arrest­ed her because she is Kur­dish and she sings in Kur­dish. (…) They banned Kur­dish edu­ca­tion and our lan­guage. Nudem has tried to keep our lan­guage alive”, con­tin­ued her relative.

We do not know much about her. Scraps, pieces that are assem­bled; we sketch a por­trait that we hope to erase in the com­ing months: Durak began to sing around the age of 12; as a mod­est house­hold­er, she bought her first gui­tar by sell­ing her moth­er’s wed­ding ring; she made her­self known local­ly, in Cizre, her town in South­east Ana­to­lia; she does not speak Eng­lish. But we have access to many of the songs of his group, Koma Sorxwin, released in the form of clips: acoustic tracks, most­ly, some­times a cap­pel­la. Let us first say in her voice what she is not: dull, husky, hurt; it ris­es, clear, enve­lope with­out more orna­ments. To cel­e­brate the Kur­dish New Year, Newroz, Nûdem Durak sings to the assem­bled crowd the song Nuda – it was in 2013. The moun­tains trace on the hori­zon a green line and wob­bly; a por­trait of Öcalan, co-founder of the PKK cap­tured in 1999, sits on the scene; Durak wears, in homage only, the uni­sex uni­form of the maquis­ards; she sings a “cry”, in her lan­guage, that lan­guage banned until the ear­ly 1990s by the nation­al­ist Turk­ish pow­er, that of “free­dom”.

Because I sang songs, they put me in jail,” she wrote last year from the bot­tom of it. “They can take every­thing from me, but nev­er my tongue or my voice!” And the young woman to sign: “with a free soul”. To the doc­u­men­tary film­mak­er Eylem Kaf­tan, who describes her as “calm and gen­tle,” the Kurd con­fides: “My only dream is to make art. His gui­tar was destroyed dur­ing a night search and his books seized. On the back of the pic­ture, in Turk­ish, this sen­tence she wrote: “Despite all that, laugh­ing is nice”. A draw­ing accom­pa­nies him: a smile, again. “I spoke about peace in all my songs and I will con­tin­ue to do so”.

There are count­less pris­on­ers in the dun­geons of Erdoğan. Sin­gu­lar­iz­ing is an affront to all; we have only one excuse: this seclu­sion has a face, that face a voice and that voice works like water, slow­ly, works the rock. Some will say that our affairs cease when the trac­ing of nations begins. “The coun­try I pre­fer is the whole world,” Hik­met swore, and the Turk­ish pres­i­dent gives “my friend” to the French one as soon as there is talk of mon­ey: the cit­i­zen has a say; the com­rade’s hand to stretch. Free­dom for Nûdem Durak and all polit­i­cal prisoners.

Joseph Andras, author

 


You can sup­port Nûdem Durak!

Petition Free Nûdem Durak • Facebook  Free Nûdem Durak • Twitter @NudemDurak •  Youtube Free Nûdem Durak • Write to Nûdem and her friends in prison: Nûdem Durak M Tipi Kapalı Cezaevi Bayburt – TURKEY

joseph andras

In 2016, Joseph Andras published his first novel, “De nos frères blessés”, to salute the memory of Fernand Iveton, an independence activist. On this occasion, he received the Goncourt Prize for the first novel, which he refused. In May 2017, alongside D’ de Kabal, he released a book-disc “Si il n’y resteit qu’un chien”, a poem about the port of Le Havre. In 2018, he spent nearly two months in Chiapas. In September 2018, he published “Kanaky. Sur les traces d’Alphonse Dianou”: an investigation into a FLNKS (Kanak and Socialist National Liberation Front) activist killed in 1988. In April 2017, he was one of the signatories to a forum denouncing the imprisonment of journalists in Turkey. On March 25, 2019, he published in Humanité this article on the Kurdish singer Nûdem Durak.

Translation : Archyworldys
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