Zaza Women Music Project was not allowed to participate in the Munzur Festival due to its name.

Source: News Center

The application of Zaza Women Music Project, which wanted to participate in the 23rd Munzur Nature and Culture Festival, was rejected by the festival committee on the grounds of the group's name.

Although the application was initially met with positive feedback, it was later announced that they would only be able to perform under individual names, but not under a group name.

The band stated that they were not directly informed of the decision and had to find out for themselves. In a written statement, the band stated, "We, who produce with the motivation of giving voice to the memory carried by the Zazaki language and its aesthetic world, bring our music to listeners entirely on our own, without receiving support from any institution or community. The purpose of naming this band, which performs a repertoire of love songs and folk songs in the Zazaki/Kirmanchki language, 'Zaza Women' was not to declare our identity; it was to draw attention to a language facing extinction and to the women performers who produce in this language."

The group, which described the festival committee's stance as censorship, said in a statement, "Wouldn't this put us in a similar position to the prohibitive and censorious attitude of the government we've been fighting for years? We, who believe that art can only exist freely, find it wrong and unacceptable that the field of culture and arts is being suppressed, designed, and determined by politicians." The statement also included the following statements:

For us, such debates are merely dysfunctional and exclusionary ideological distinctions. Because the existence of a language is sustained not by official definitions, but by the people who speak, produce, and keep it alive. Even in environments where concepts like "brotherhood of peoples," "multilingualism," "equal representation," and "women's freedom" are frequently voiced today, encountering these practical forms of exclusion makes us think.

We are excluded. But this exclusion will not silence us, diminish our faith, or break our courage. We are here with our language, our labor, our voices. And we will always be here, in the heart of Dersim .