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.