Singing in Kurdish cannot divide Turkey

Then, a few days after his performance, members of Turkey’s rightist Ulkucu movement, the youth wing of former government partner the National Action Party, staged a large protest in Istanbul against the singer.

The demonstrators carried banners saying, "Do not make our patience run out, we might visit you one night unexpectedly" and "We will hang you".

The furor comes after an EU report last month praised Turkey for its progress towards meeting the bloc’s membership criteria – including those on human rights.

For years, Turkey’s large ethnic Kurdish minority had been denied language rights.

But recent legislation passed by the parliament in Ankara had liberalised this, allowing freedom to broadcast and publish in Kurdish, along with some rights to education in the mother tongue.

However, the EU report did say much more was needed to be done to ensure these reforms were fully understood, accepted and implemented.

Singer threatened

Tatlises, who has repeatedly outsold other artists in Turkey’s pop charts, responded to the criticism on Turkish TV channel CNN Turk, late in December.

“I am not ashamed of my accent,” he told viewers, “otherwise I should be also ashamed of my mother and father.”

The singer, who was born in a cave and left school before he was 10, is massively popular for his pioneering role in developing a musical style known as ”Arabesque", fusing Middle Eastern and Western rhythms.

As for allegations from critics that singing in Kurdish promotes separatism, Tatlises responded, “I know that I do not have the power to divide Turkey. I do not hold separatist views about Turkey. I love Turkey very much. I am an artist and an artist does not have a party.”

But on 14 December, police arrested three Ulkucus, who were allegedly lying in wait near an Istanbul television station where Tatlises was recording a programme. In the men’s car, the police said they found a handgun, an automatic rifle and a stolen police uniform.

Police said that under interrogation, the men admitted they were planning to kill the singer for having sung in Kurdish.

All have been charged with attempted murder.

The song marked the first time Tatlises had sung in his native language before a large audience, or on television, having previously said that: “The timing was not right”.

However, for many in Turkey it seems, the timing is still not right, nor ever will be.

Rights’ groups support

Support for Tatlises – who is also well known in Turkey for his high profile lifestyle, many girlfriends and alleged links to the criminal underworld – came from many Kurdish rights groups.