The governor's office for the province of Muş has banned a concert by Metin and Kemal Kahraman planned for Tuesday. As the artist duo explained in a statement, they were only informed of the ban on the event one day before the concert. The announcement was made by telephone, shortly before the closing time of the authority. The written decision could be received only today in the course of the day, it was said. There will then hardly be any time left for an urgent application to the court against the ban order.

"This action is not merely limited to a ban. The action [of the governor] aims at a material and moral burden at the same time, for us musicians as well as for the organizers and our audience," criticize the Kahraman brothers. For months, they had been collectively busy organizing the concert, with dozens of people working for it. The event hall was rented without "institutional support," airline tickets were bought for the musicians, and hotels were booked.

Metin and Kemal Kahraman call on the collecting societies Müyorbir and Mesam and other relevant institutions to condemn the concert ban and take a stance against the governor's treatment of the duo. The AKP official has not yet commented on the matter.

Just the day before, a concert by Kurdish singer Aynur Doğan planned for this week was banned in the western Turkish city of Kocaeli. The event was classified as "not suitable" after a thorough examination by the municipality of Derince and was banned, the local authorities said succinctly as a reason. An avalanche of indignation immediately rolled out on social networks. Many users see the actions of the Derine municipality as discrimination against Kurds and accuse the municipality of anti-Kurdish racism. This is probably also true in the case of the Kahraman brothers.

Metin and Kemal Kahraman are from the Kurdish-Alevi region of Dersim. In the early 1990s, they began making field recordings in their homeland. They asked older relatives and acquaintances to sing songs to document the tradition of Dersim, which is in danger of disappearing. This documentation is a pioneering work. It consists of music, fairy tales and myths of the culture of Kirmanckî - this variety of Kurdish is also called Zazakî, Dimilkî or Kirdkî. Metin and Kemal Kahraman are not only musicians and songwriters, but also ethnomusicologists.