Turkey arrests Kurdish singer Hozan Cane on ‘terror-related’ charges

ERBIL (Kurdistan 24) – A Kurdish-German singer, detained in Turkey over the weekend, was charged on Wednesday for “membership in a terrorist organization.”

Police in Turkey arrested 47-year-old Saide Inac, known by her artist name as Hozan Cane, on terrorism-related charges, Turkish media reported.

Inac, a German citizen, was detained on June 22 in the province of Edirne where she had visited to perform at campaign rallies for the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) ahead of snap polls in Turkey on Sunday.

The HDP won over 11 percent (11.7) of votes, comfortably surpassing the required 10 percent for a party to enter Parliament and becoming the second-largest opposition party in Turkey.

Prosecutors alleged Inac of spreading propaganda for the banned Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) based on a social media post where she apparently poses with the Kurdish rebels.

The post in question, according to the Kurdish singer, is a scene from her movie “The 74th Genocide in Sinjar” which she directs and plays the lead role. The film covers the so-called Islamic State’s genocide against the minority group in northern Iraq’s Shingal region.

Šengal filiminde bir kare??? Hozan Cane pic.twitter.com/ghEwXdezfd

— Hozan Cane (@Caneinac) September 3, 2017

Turkey has arrested dual Turkish-German citizens in the past over alleged terrorism-related charges, often keeping them in pretrial detention for months on end or years before they are given a trial, German Deutsche Welle reported.

There has been no comment from German authorities regarding the 47-year-old’s arrest.

Inac was born in Turkey before seeking refuge in Germany in the 1990s. She lives in the western German city of Cologne.