The history of the Kurds is not only a history of displacement, repression, and denied identity. It is also a history of survival through language, music, poetry, and memory. When states tried to erase names, ban languages, and silence cultures, music often remained the last space of freedom. The voice of the dengbêj, the song of exile, the poetry of loss, and the stories told by mothers became forms of resistance.
For the Kurds, art was never merely entertainment. It was dignity, memory, and psychological survival.
And among all forms of art, music held a special place. Kurdish musicians carried a people’s emotions across borders, prisons, exile, and generations. Long before political institutions existed, songs preserved collective memory. A melody often survived where books, schools, and even villages disappeared.
That is why artistic freedom is not a secondary issue for Kurdish society. It is an existential one.
A people that was forced into silence for generations should not silence its own artists and musicians in the name of a “higher truth.”
Yet this is increasingly happening within parts of the Kurdish cultural scene. In recent years, a growing divide has emerged between independent artists and those who believe art and music must serve a political organization, an ideology, or a nationalist line.
Of course, every artist has the right to be political. Kurdish music itself was often born from suffering, resistance, and the longing for freedom. Many singers became symbols of collective struggle. There is nothing wrong with musicians supporting political movements or organizations.
The problem begins when commitment turns into pressure.
Today, Kurdish musicians increasingly attack one another publicly. Some accuse others of betrayal because they perform at certain events, speak to certain media outlets, or refuse to align themselves politically. Others are insulted because of their wealth, their personal lifestyle, their families, or their artistic choices. Social media has amplified this culture of humiliation and suspicion.
But when musicians begin destroying one another morally and psychologically, culture itself becomes wounded.
Art cannot grow in an atmosphere of fear.
No musician should be psychologically attacked, publicly humiliated, or morally condemned because they choose to remain independent. No singer should be treated as a traitor for refusing to repeat political slogans. The moment artists are forced into obedience, art loses its essence. It becomes propaganda.
Art is not a military order.
It is not a party directive.
And music is not the property of any political organization.
The philosopher Michel Foucault once described power not only as something imposed by states, but as something that slowly enters language, thought, and social behavior. This is especially important for societies shaped by long histories of oppression. Over time, external repression can become internal control. Fear of division creates conformity. Solidarity becomes discipline. Political identity turns into moral surveillance.
But freedom begins where thinking becomes possible again.
A society that only tolerates what is politically useful slowly loses its creative energy. Art then no longer searches for truth. It only confirms what people are expected to think. The artist is no longer seen as a free mind, but as a functionary of a cause.
The Kurds, more than many others, know the consequences of cultural repression. Kurdish songs were banned. Writers were imprisoned. Musicians were criminalized. States decided which language could be spoken and which culture was allowed to exist.
It would be tragic if similar mechanisms were now reproduced within Kurdish society itself.
True freedom means accepting not only the voices we agree with, but also those we reject. One may find a song vulgar, commercial, politically naive, or disappointing — and still defend its right to exist. This is the maturity of a democratic culture.
Freedom does not begin when we protect what we love.
It begins when we tolerate what challenges us.
Hannah Arendt warned that totalitarian thinking begins when people stop thinking for themselves and simply repeat collective truths. That is why authoritarian systems have always feared artists, writers, musicians, and intellectuals. Not because art carries weapons, but because it creates doubt. Art opens spaces for contradiction, ambiguity, and individuality.
Music, in particular, has always carried a special meaning for the Kurds. Friedrich Nietzsche once wrote: “Without music, life would be a mistake.” For stateless peoples, music is often more than art. It becomes a collective archive of suffering and hope. Kurdish songs carried exile, grief, love, resistance, and memory across generations and borders.
For this reason, Kurdish music cannot belong to political parties, ideological movements, or self appointed guardians of patriotism.
A singer should be allowed to sing love songs without being called a traitor.
A musician should be free to remain apolitical.
An artist has the right to become successful and wealthy.
A songwriter must be free to criticize.
And intellectuals must have the courage to think against the current.
The audience, not political gatekeepers, should decide which music and art matter.
No one owns Kurdish culture.
Historically, Kurdish identity was never homogeneous. Kurdish society has always been religious and secular, tribal and urban, traditional and modern. Kurds are Sunni, Alevi, Yazidi, Christian, and non religious. Their strength never came from uniformity, but from their ability to preserve diversity under conditions of oppression.
This is why Kurdish society urgently needs a deeper intellectual debate about the freedom of art and music. A debate beyond party structures, social media intimidation, and ideological reflexes. A debate about the role of musicians, artists, and intellectuals in a future democratic Kurdish society.
Jean Paul Sartre saw the intellectual as someone who exposes contradictions within society. Foucault argued that intellectuals must reveal hidden structures of power. Noam Chomsky described their responsibility more directly: to speak the truth and expose lies.
Perhaps this is the deepest meaning of art for oppressed peoples: art reminds human beings that freedom does not begin with the creation of a state. It begins with the freedom to think, to doubt, to speak, and to create without fear.
A people does not survive through politics alone.
It survives through its ability to remember, to imagine, and to create freely.
And this is precisely why artistic freedom is not a threat to the Kurdish cause. It is one of its most democratic and human expressions.
Dr. Jan Ilhan Kizilhan is a psychologist, author and publisher, an expert in psychotraumatology, trauma, terror and war, transcultural psychiatry, psychotherapy and migration.
The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the position of Rudaw.
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