In Turkey’s largest province with a Kurdish majority, Diyarbakir (Amed, real name of the province), Turkish police detained eight persons on Friday, including Kurdish musician Sarya Ertaş, on vague allegations, according to the Mezopotamya Agency.
Four persons, including Kurdish musician Sarya Ertaş, were detained on undisclosed accusations on Friday morning in house raids in Diyarbakr (Amed), Turkey’s largest Kurdish-majority province.
In the raids that proceeded in the hours that followed, eight persons were detained, but the Mezopotamya Agency stated that 30 people had arrest warrants filed for them.
Due to a confidentially provision in the investigation file, the chief public prosecutor for the province withheld the arrest information from the attorneys.
The detentions, according to a late-Friday report from Mezopotamya News, were probably related to protests over a cultural festival that the Ministry of Culture and Tourism planned in Diyarbakr’s historic Sur district, which was largely evacuated by locals following a Turkish military operation in 2015 that resulted in the destruction of an estimated 4,985 buildings.
Sarya Ertaş, a detained musician, is the daughter of Mardin (Kurdish province) based Kurdish artist Ibrahim Ertaş, also known as Dengbej Axîn Biro, who was apprehended in November 2015 and jailed for 22 years and 6 months on terrorism-related accusations.
Sarya Ertas, in Kurdish traditional clothes
