Turkey is being accused of pressuring organizers of a film festival in the city of Sulaimaniyah in Iraqi Kurdistan to cancel the screening of an award-winning entry depicting the resistance put up by the youth wing of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) against the Turkish army during its three-month-long siege of Sur, the historic heart of Diyarbakir, in 2016.

While the exact death toll remains unknown, hundreds of civilians are thought to have died in an urban insurrection that began in 2015 when the PKK declared autonomy in a string of predominantly Kurdish towns and cities across the southeast and left entire neighborhoods, including Sur, in ruins. The UN said in a report  that Turkey had committed vast abuses, including unlawful killings of women and children.

The film “Ji Bo Azadiye” or “The End Will Be Spectacular” is based on the diaries of young fighters in Sur.

The Turkish state typically intervenes with foreign governments to suppress cultural events, the erection of monuments and the like that refer to past atrocities against ethnic and religious minorities, notably Armenians and Kurds. In this particular case, Turkey allegedly enlisted Kurds to act against their own brethren, sowing divisions and feelings of betrayal.

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Organizers of the fifth annual Sulaimaniyah International Film Festival informed director Ersin Celik that his film was being withdrawn just hours before its scheduled showing on Dec. 18. The organizers claimed it was because the film did not meet the requirement that films competing in the feature film category be no more than two years old. Celik’s film was shot in Kobani, a town on the Syrian Kurdish border that won international fame with its epic resistance against the Islamic State, and released in 2019.