Singer Cevdet Bağca was sentenced to imprisonment of ten months for saying "Do not forget Kazım Koyuncu, Ahmet Kaya, Ozan Serhat and Delila. Do not forget Uğur Kaymaz" in a concert performed in the south-eastern city of Siirt.

Bağca had delivered a brief speech at a concert in Siirt on 29 September 2009. The opinions he voiced were recorded by the police as "sympathizing for an illegal organization and spreading propaganda about a member of the organization".

Freely available music CDs accepted as proof

The police records were presented as evidence as well as footage and photographs taken by the police. Bağca criticized: "So this is the opening process! A trial and a decision like a caricature".

"The court was established with the aim of punishing. We presented to the court CDs of Ozan Serhat and Delila that were approved by the Ministry of Culture and Tourism, but they were not taken into account. We are reading the works of these artists in Turkey. No matter how they lost their lives, these people are artists", Bağca stated.

"This is like a joke. How can an expert committee be made of special operation police officers? A trial cannot be caricaturized that much. This is the opening!", Bağca said and referred to the Democratic Initiative put forward by the government.

The decision was taken by the Diyarbakır 5^th High Criminal Court on 29 June but communicated only recently. Bağça's speech was evaluated as "propaganda for an illegal organization".

The DİHA news agency reported that according to the official police report, Bağca praised Kazım Koyuncu and Ahmet Kaya, two persons who allegedly sympathized with the PKK/KONGRA-GEL organization (the militant Kurdistan Workers Party) and spread propaganda for the terror organization. It was furthermore claimed in the report that he praised Ozan Serhat and Delila, supposed PKK/KONGRA-GEL members who were killed in operations in rural areas. Bağca allegedly praised both people who were killed in conflicts between armed members of the organization and the armed forces, the police report continued. By doing so, Bağdaş "spread propaganda for an illegal organization", the report determined.

Koyuncu and Kaya became "sympathizers with the PKK"

The police report furthermore called singers Kazım Koyuncu and Ahmet Kaya sympathizers with the PKK. Koyuncu is a musician from the Laz region on the eastern Black Sea Coast. Kaya became subject of a lynch attack after he had said "I will produce a Kurdish song and I know that there are people brave enough to publish it". He went to Paris later on where he died.

Numerous music festivals in the Black Sea region were organized in the name of Koyuncu as well as a festival on 3 July by the Republican People's Party (CHP) in the Karabağlar District Municipality in Izmir. The description of Kouncu as a "sympathizer of the PKK" was reason for harsh reactions against the police report.

The report furthermore referred to Ozan Serhat and Delila not as artists but as "members of an illegal organization". Twelve year-old Uğur Kaymaz, who had also been mentioned by Bağca in his speech, was killed together with his father on 21 November 2004 in the province of Mardin because they were alleged members of the People's Defence Forces (HPG), the armed wing of the PKK. Bağca's words not to forget Kaymaz were assessed as "propaganda for an illegal organization" in the report. (EÖ/VK)