Kurdish singer jailed in Turkey returns to Germany

Excerpt

COLOGNE, Germany — A Kurdish-German singer returned to Germany this week after being jailed in Turkey on terror charges.

“I am thrilled to have returned. As a mother, I am very happy to have seen my children,” Saide Inac, better known by her stage name Hozan Cane, told Rudaw’s Alla Shaly on Thursday on her arrival in Cologne where family and friends greeted her at the airport.

“I left many of my friends behind. I hope they too will enjoy freedom. They have suffered much more than I did. They are all innocent. They are political prisoners. I want them to see freedom. I want the Kurds to see freedom,” she said.

Cane was arrested in June 2018. The singer had gone to Turkey to support the election campaign of the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP). She was charged with alleged links to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), an armed group fighting for greater rights for Kurds in Turkey but deemed a terrorist organization by Ankara.

She was sentenced to six years and three months in jail, but released from jail in October 2020 on condition she remain in the country while a court case against her continued.

Her travel ban was lifted this week, allowing her to return to Germany.

In Cologne, she said she wants to see the international community work to free political prisoners held in Turkey.

“Turkey’s prisons are so dire. There is systematic torture,” she said. “I hope Europe and the whole world react to reach out to the jailed people. They are in need of assistance from every single human being.”

In its 2020 human rights report on Turkey, the US Department of State expressed concern about detention of political prisoners and abuse in prison. In Turkey “government agents engaged in threats, mistreatment, and possible torture of some persons while in custody. Human rights groups asserted that individuals with alleged affiliation with the PKK or the Gulen movement were more likely to be subjected to mistreatment or abuse,” the report stated.

Quotes

• “I left many of my friends behind. I hope they too will enjoy freedom. They have suffered much more than I did. They are all innocent. They are political prisoners. I want them to see freedom. I want the Kurds to see freedom,”

  — Hozan Cane

Highlights

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