Turkey is being accused of pressuring organizers of a movie pageant within the metropolis of Sulaimaniyah in Iraqi Kurdistan to cancel the screening of an award-winning entry depicting the resistance put up by the youth wing of the outlawed Kurdistan Staff Social gathering (PKK) in opposition to the Turkish military throughout its three-month-long siege of Sur, the historic coronary heart of Diyarbakir, in 2016.
Whereas the precise dying toll stays unknown, tons of of civilians are thought to have died in an city rebel that started in 2015 when the PKK declared autonomy in a string of predominantly Kurdish cities and cities throughout the southeast and left complete neighborhoods, together with Sur, in ruins. The UN mentioned in a report that Turkey had dedicated vast abuses, together with illegal killings of ladies and youngsters.
The movie “Ji Bo Azadiye” or “The End Will Be Spectacular” relies on the diaries of younger fighters in Sur.
The Turkish state sometimes intervenes with overseas governments to suppress cultural occasions, the erection of monuments and the like that discuss with previous atrocities in opposition to ethnic and spiritual minorities, notably Armenians and Kurds. On this specific case, Turkey allegedly enlisted Kurds to behave in opposition to their very own brethren, sowing divisions and emotions of betrayal.
Organizers of the fifth annual Sulaimaniyah Worldwide Movie Pageant knowledgeable director Ersin Celik that his movie was being withdrawn simply hours earlier than its scheduled displaying on Dec. 18. The organizers claimed it was as a result of the movie didn’t meet the requirement that movies competing within the function movie class be not more than two years outdated. Celik’s movie was shot in Kobani, a city on the Syrian Kurdish border that received worldwide fame with its epic resistance in opposition to the Islamic State, and launched in 2019.
Lina Raza, director of programming, instructed Al-Monitor, “This has nothing to do with political stress in any respect. It has to do with our guidelines.” Why had it taken the organizers so lengthy to appreciate that “Ji Bo Azadiye” didn’t qualify? “There have been 142 movies,” Raza mentioned. “I requested all the administrators to inform the reality.”
She went on, “That is about belief between me and the administrators,” and despatched Al-Monitor a display shot from the pageant’s webpage through WhatsApp outlining the principles.
Nevertheless, Celik and his co-producer Diyar Hesso gave a wholly completely different model of occasions that was supported by correspondence between themselves and the pageant organizers and a display shot from the pageant’s web site with the principles for Kurdish cinema. It states, “No requirement.” Hesso charged that the organizers had amended the web page at this time to suit their very own narrative. Raza didn’t reply to Al-Monitor’s request for remark relating to the declare.
Celik instructed Al-Monitor that he supplied a compromise whereby the movie was withdrawn from the competitors however proven on the scheduled time “in order to spare the organizers embarrassment and disgrace.” That supply was spurned, reinforcing suspicions that Turkish officers had been behind the affair.
Celik, who left Turkey in 2013 after being convicted of spreading “terrorist propaganda” for his work as a journalist on police abuse, acknowledged that he had no proof. Nevertheless, he added, that he did imagine that Turkey was in charge for the affair as a result of it had sought to stop the movie from being proven at different festivals. “In some cases they succeeded, in others they didn’t,” Celik mentioned.
Turkey has arguably extra financial leverage over the Iraqi Kurds than some other nation, together with Iran and the USA. Iraqi Kurdish oil, a giant income, is exported regardless of an ongoing authorized problem from Baghdad by a pipeline that runs to loading terminals at Turkey’s Mediterranean port of Ceyhan. Ankara has used that leverage to deploy hundreds of troops and combat its conflict in opposition to the PKK throughout Iraqi Kurdistan. The PKK accuses the Kurdistan Democratic Social gathering (KDP), which wields the best energy within the Kurdistan Regional Authorities, of colluding with Turkey. Tensions between the PKK and the KDP escalated over the summer season, leading to lethal clashes.
The Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), which prevails in Sulaimaniyah, has historically loved nearer ties with the PKK. But it surely has come underneath mounting stress from Ankara to curb the latter’s actions since August 2017 when the PKK kidnapped three Turkish intelligence operatives.
Winthrop Rodgers, an unbiased commentator on Kurdish affairs primarily based in Sulaimaniyah, famous, “The PUK has at all times been topic to pressures from Turkey and has acted on it.” He cited one other instance of Turkish-driven censorship from January 2019, when the Asayish, the identify for inside safety forces, closed down Sinema Salim, an area cafe and movie show simply earlier than it was supposed to indicate a movie about Sakine Cansiz on the anniversary of her killing. Cansiz was a founding member of the PKK who was assassinated by a Turkish citizen with alleged hyperlinks to Turkey’s intelligence companies in Paris in January 2013.
The cafe was allowed to reopen however was denied permission to display “Ji Bo Azadiye” earlier this yr.
In November 2018 the PUK shut down all of the places of work of the PKK-friendly Kurdistan Free Society Motion. “The idea on the time, which was by no means actually refuted, was that each of these [moves] got here underneath Turkish stress and as an obvious act of appeasement,” Rodgers instructed Al-Monitor. The purpose was to get Ankara to reopen its airspace to flights from Sulaimaniyah’s airport, which had been closed by Baghdad in response to the Iraqi Kurds’ referendum on independence. Ankara continued to implement the ban even after Baghdad lifted it. Flights resumed in January 2019.
The newest accusations of Turkish meddling arose when the PUK moved in opposition to Lahur Talabani, a senior PUK determine who’s overtly sympathetic to the PKK and hostile to Turkey.
Ankara’s bullying doesn’t at all times work. In 2016, the Turkish authorities tried to get Swedish authorities to ban the screening of “Bakur” or “Turkish Kurdistan,” an award-winning documentary detailing the day by day lives of PKK fighters that options high PKK commanders Cemil Bayik and Fehman Huseyin. They refused.
Ertugurul Mavioglu, a veteran Turkish journalist who co-directed the movie, was sentenced to 6 years in jail for “propagating terrorism” and presently lives in exile in Greece. He instructed Al-Monitor, “Not solely is it possible, it’s completely sure that Turkey prevented the screening of ‘Ji Bo Azadiye.’”
