A Diyarbakir court had issued an arrest warrant against Kazim Oz for alleged connections with the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and propagandizing for it.
DHA agency reported that the filmmaker was on his way from his hometown Tunceli (Dersim) to Elazig when he was arrested on Saturday.
Minutes before being arrested, he posted on his Facebook and Instagram accounts that he “is being arrested in Pertek [city] gate because of a search warrant.”
On July 9, 2017, he posited on Instagram how Selahattin Demirtas could be a terrorist and have more than 1.5 million Twitter followers on a verified account.
Demirtas, the former co-chair of the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), has been jailed since November 2016 on charges which included ties to the PKK — which he denies. The parties also deny any link with each other.
Although Turkey officially lifted its state of emergency in July, dissent against the state is not tolerated.
The country has jailed tens of thousands of people in a crackdown after the attempted coup of July 2016 and in the prolonged conflict with the PKK.
The head of the Tunceli bar association, Kenan Cetin, said there was a case against Oz in 2011 for “being a member of terrorist organization, adding that “it is unclear whether he was officially arrested or they will only take his testimony.”
Oz is an acclaimed artist whose work has been awarded in Europe and the United States. He has been making films for more than 20 years.
In March, he spoke to Rudaw for an interview about making the fiction film ‘Zer’ that traces a Turkish-American back to Kurdistan where he learns his true ethnic heritage and shines lite on the Turkish government’s Turkish government’s systematic murder of an estimated 40,000 – 70,000 Alevi Kurds.
He was asked about the difficulties of making the film in ever-restrictive Turkey.
“By the time Zer was in post-production, political tension was running very, very high. Not only did the Ministry of Culture withdraw its support for Zer, they actively began trying to suppress the film. As far as I know, Zer is the only film in Turkish history that was first supported and then suppressed in this manner,” he explained.
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