Gökçek is the 40-year-old bassist who had been detained on February 26, 2019 at the music education center, Idil Cultural Center, of the school when the police raided and destroyed the place. Later he was arrested and has been under arrest since. However, insisting he has not done anything wrong, the guitarist started a hunger strike which has been going on for 219 days to protest the unlawful arrest and the raids the group have been experiencing at their cultural center and elsewhere. Recently he changed the hunger strike to a “Death Strike” going all the way. This is how strongly the group members feel about their struggle to bring justice, democracy and freedom of speech to the country
İbrahim Gökçek is a guitar player, bass to be exact. That is what he does, that is what he has been doing. He is the bassist of the music group Grup Yorum in Turkey. He is now facing life imprisonment for doing just that. How dare he?
The music group has been under constant and violent attack by the Turkish police for none other than playing songs the government does not like.
Wherever they go their concerts are being forcefully cancelled by the government, their songs banned, their music education centers constantly raided, destroyed, closed, by the Turkish police.
So, what is it in their songs that the government fears so much? What makes this group the “public enemy number one” in Turkey?
Instead of singing uppity love songs about sweet nothings, the members of the Grup Yorum have chosen to sing folk songs of their country. The songs are about the people, the common folks, workers, women, their daily struggle in life, their feelings, their love, their hopes, their crushed dreams. They sing in Turkish and they dare to sing in Kurdish, the language of around 25% of the population of the land. And, this insistence of singing about the real world that puts them on the cross hairs of a government that has no tolerance for any kind of dissent.
Recently a concert that had been planned for months in Adana was shut down only hours before starting because, the Governor explained, of “safety concerns.” No information, of course, was provided what those “concerns” were.
The seven members of the group have finally been charged with crimes hopefully to end the ordeal they are experiencing. At least they will have a chance to refute the charges against them. Who knows is it being constantly harassed by the government with no charges that is better or finally being charged with openly stupid and laughable crimes that is better. If only the stakes were not so high and the members were not charged with life imprisonment for playing guitars and singing.
The preparation of the charges has been finalized by the prosecutor and presented to the courts of “High Crimes and Punishments.” Their first trial date is February the 14th. Yes, the group will be on trial at the “High Crimes and Punishments Courts of Turkey” side by side with mass murderers and rapists for singing.
Gökçek is the 40-year-old bassist who had been detained on February 26, 2019 at the music education center, Idil Cultural Center, of the school when the police raided and destroyed the place. Later he was arrested and has been under arrest since. However, insisting he has not done anything wrong, the guitarist started a hunger strike which has been going on for 219 days to protest the unlawful arrest and the raids the group have been experiencing at their cultural center and elsewhere. Recently he changed the hunger strike to a “Death Strike” going all the way. This is how strongly the group members feel about their struggle to bring justice, democracy and freedom of speech to the country.
Having nothing, completely nothing, to charge the group members with, the police and the prosecutors started making up crimes out of thin air. They prepared a 159-page accusation that goes back to reference leftist peoples’ actions, clashes and resistance against the government brutality that took place in 1972. Gökçek wasn’t even born then.
The entire accusation the prosecutor could conjure up has no basis whatsoever except citing over and over again that “he acts as if he could be a member of a terrorist organization.” That is it. And the punishment for “acting like” is lifetime in prison.
What came out of this case documents is the information that the police have been collecting information on the group members since 2004 and 2005. The document relies on witnesses who testified against the player without knowing who he was. The testament reads, “On the person whose identity I just learned from you (the police), he is a member of the Grup Yorum which is a legal music group that is in the Idil Cultural Center of the DHKP/C organization.” DHKP/C is a revolutionary left organization considered to be terrorist by Turkey.
The accusation also mentions that he had been detained by the police before but had been set free without any charges.
Now, comes the unrefuted and undisputed crime that proves without a shadow of a doubt that the bassist is a member of a terrorist organization: Gökçek had refused the food offered by the police just like a terrorist organization member would do!
Who needs more proof than this? His starting a hunger strike to protest the attacks against the cultural center is shown as further proof that he had to be a member of an illegal organization.
However, in his statement, the guitarist refused all these fake charges and wrote, “Grup Yorum music group is the only group that I am a member of. My only job is to play guitar in this group. I am not a member of any other organization outside of Grup Yorum. I am not a member or a leader anywhere else. I do work in the Idil Cultural Center. I was ‘captured’ in the same cultural center. We are not running away from justice. Justice, however, is actually running away from us.
“Our doors got broken down so many times, our computers have been confiscated so many times, our records have disappeared so many times that we don’t know how we can preserve, defend, protect these? Idil Cultural Center will become the symbol of injustice of Turkey.
“Let us go so we can go and continue doing our art.”
The musician also rejected the so-called witness report about him. He said, “However, even your witness openly says he THINKS that I may be a member of an organization. You cannot prosecute people by someone else’s thoughts.”
Sendika.Org News (M.B.)