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Treasonous Turkish Teens Go Free

By Erin Wildermuth on 6.19.08 @ 4:47PM

Some of the charges against a traveling Turkish choir of 12 to 17 year olds were dropped today by a judge in Diyarbakir. The youth had been charged with spreading propaganda for an illegal rebel group, the PKK, at a musical festival appearance in San Francisco.

It turns out one of the choir songs, sung in an old form of Kurdish that the children didn't understand and in a foreign country, was grounds for prosecution. The judge dismissed the charge by deciding that the children had not intended to be so terribly treasonous. But fear not, it is still illegal to sing the song in question, "Ey Raqip" ("Hey, Enemy"), in Turkey.