The Turkish government has banned more than two hundred songs!

The Dhaka Times Desk The Turkish government has banned more than two hundred songs in the world where music is a cultural heritage! The songs allegedly promote drug addiction and terrorism.

According to media reports, Turkey's national broadcaster TRT has banned more than two hundred songs. The songs have been accused of promoting drug addiction and terrorism. However, the singers have denied the allegations.

In 2010, Kurdish musician Rozda was sentenced to one year and 8 months in prison for the crime of singing. At the time, the complaint said, Rozdar's songs at a cultural festival in the Kurdish city of Diyarbakir were essentially 'terrorist propaganda'. After 8 years in February this year, the singer said that 3 of her songs have been banned again due to the same complaint. But Rozda said that the subject of the 3 songs is the campaign for peace!

Turkish Radio and Television Corporation TRT has banned a total of 208 songs since 2016. 66 of these songs are in Kurdish. However, the public came to know about this after a representative of the opposition CHP demanded an investigation into the incident. When Roshda showed him the list, he wasn't surprised at all. As the reason for this, he mentions that this is not the first time such an incident has happened to him, it has happened before.

Rozda's banned songs were released in 2007 and TRT radio and television aired his songs for several years.

TRT said in a statement, "These songs promote drinking, smoking and terrorism. Which will have a bad impact on the country's children and youth." Among the banned songs are several famous pop songs. Pop music artists strongly protested this incident.

It should be noted that banning music in Turkey is not a new phenomenon. This has been going on since before Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's party took power. Orhan Ginsberg's 'May This World End' was banned in the eighties.

Erdoğan's AKP party introduced a new proposal to parliament in February, which would have required permission from Turkey's broadcasting authority before airing each song and scenes recorded with the song. The new law will also have government control over online dissemination.