Turkey’s Culture Minister visits Ahmet Kaya and Yilmaz Guney’s graves in Paris

PARIS

Turkey’s Culture and Tourism Minister Omer Celik, who is currently in Paris to promote Turkey as an EXPO 2020 nominee, also visited the graves of two exiled Turkish celebrities, Ahmet Kaya and Yilmaz Guney, who both died in Paris.

Celik underlined that Turkey has left the days behind when “valuable artists and thinkers had to flee their country because of oppression,” referring to Kaya and Yilmaz, who both had to flee Turkey because of pressure on their political views during their respective time.

Emphasizing that nobody has to flee Turkey any longer because of their opinions and beliefs, Celik said, ”Everyone has the right to live freely in their country.”

Celik said Kaya and Guney’s graves in Pere Lachaise, located in Paris, are a symbol of the restricted freedom in Turkey’s past.

Ahmet Kaya, a singer and songwriter with Kurdish descent who was exiled for advocating Kurdish rights, died in Paris in 2000.

Leftist filmmaker and actor Yilmaz Guney, who escaped a Turkish prison in 1981 and fled to France, directed the internationally acclaimed film “Yol” (Road), which won the Palme d’Or at the 1982 Cannes Film Festival. Guney died in Paris in 1984.

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