Turkey arrests editor of Kurdish literary magazine

Turkish anti-terror police on Sunday arrested the Kurdish author and translator Fahriye Adsay in an early morning raid on her house in the city of Diyarbakir, said the Kurdistan24 bureau there.

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region (Kurdistan24) – Turkish anti-terror police on Sunday arrested the Kurdish author and translator Fahriye Adsay in an early morning raid on her house in the city of Diyarbakir, said the Kurdistan24 bureau there.

Turkish authorities are yet to reveal the charges against Adsay who is also the Editor-in-Chief of the Kurdish literary magazine Zarema.

Adsay was an English school teacher until her dismissal in early September alongside 14,000 other teachers purged by the Turkish Government which accuses them of ties to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).

Adsay's publisher Abdullah Keskin, who is the owner and editor of the Kurdish Avesta Publications, told Kurdistan24 the author’s arrest was a further sign of the rising state authoritarianism in Turkey after the failed military coup.

Turkey’s government imposed a state of emergency throughout the country after the coup attempt, restricting freedoms and empowering the police and prosecutors.

“We see [the arrest of Adsay] as an attack on Kurdish culture and language. Because there is nothing else that can explain why they would take her to the anti-terror department from her home,” said Keskin.

“Everything she does is in front of the public. She has been teaching English and writing Kurdish her whole career. I published 15 books she translated into Kurdish and Turkish,” he continued.

“Her place is not the anti-terror department of Diyarbakir police,” Keskin said, adding he hoped Adsay would soon be set free.

Among the books Adsay translated are British historian David Nicolle’s works on the Crusades, as well as publications on Kurdish women, diaspora, Ezidis, and Jews.

Sidki Zilan, a Diyarbakir-based lawyer who is following the Adsay case, told Kurdistan24 her family and lawyers could not meet her until at least five days in detention.

According to Zilan, the authorities were acting on government decrees that empowered them under the state of the emergency rule.

 

Editing by Karzan Sulaivany