Turkey teacher reports students to police for listening to Kurdish music

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region (Kurdistan24) - A teacher at a high school in the western Turkish city of Aydin reported six of his students to police for listening to Kurdish music and dancing, leading to their interrogation by police last week on the grounds of "disseminating terrorist propaganda."

Fourteen-year-old student Y.B. and five of his friends at the Aydin Anatolian Imam Hatip High school were doing "govend," a Kurdish dance, during a break when their school counselor walked on them and confiscated a flash drive they were using.

Imam Hatip schools in the constitutionally secular Turkey are state-funded Islamic religious institutions where future clerics and imams are trained.

The counselor and the school's administrator allegedly reported the students to the local prosecutor's office which notified the police on February 14.

After interrogation at a police station in Aydin where their parents were also summoned, the students were referred to a local courthouse which decided to release them for lack of proof with the condition of a judicial control.

The DHA reported that the students faced 'psychological problems' for what they had to go through. They stopped attending their classes after being shunned at school.

Y.B.'s father A.B. told reporters that injustice was done to his son and other students, vowing he would file a complaint against the school administration.

"I am Kurdish. And I am proud of it. We are not people who would betray our country and nation. Nobody can treat us as traitors. Nobody can accuse anybody else of treason for listening to Kurdish music. We will follow this case and seek justice," said the father.

There was no comment by the General Directorate of Education in Aydin, and the high school students were attending.

The incident was reminiscent of earlier suppression and ban of public use of the Kurdish language during the past decades since the foundation of the Republic of Turkey.

Although the mother tongue of some 20 million citizens, the Kurdish language is still not recognized in the Constitution and children are denied the right to education in it.

Editing by Ava Homa