Helin Bölek (1991-2020)
Born in 1991, Helin Bölek was a Kurdish singer and native of Amed, Northern Kurdistan. She was a soloist with Grup Yorum, a leftist folk band. The group was the first band in Turkey to include a Kurdish song on an album. Grup Yorum is continuously subjected to intense censorship and targeting by the Turkish government due to their revolutionary lyrics and stances. This suppression has manifested itself through police raids on the Idil Cultural Center, the group’s headquarters, which have continued over several years. During these raids, police have arrested musicians, including Bölek, and destroyed musical instruments.
Helin Bölek singing with Grup Yorum.
It is these very tangible government-facilitated forms of oppression and attempts at silencing voices of dissent that led Bölek, in solidarity with her fellow Grup Yorum members, to begin a hunger strike in 2019, the same year she was arrested. She was released in November 2019, but continued her hunger strike in a demand for an end to Turkey’s suppression of musicians.
Helin’s mother Aygül Bilgi tending to her daughter.
Just a few weeks later, after her 288-day hunger strike, Helin Bölek died. As mourners marched to deliver her coffin to a cemevi, a significant Alevi place of worship, police intervened and detained people participating in the ceremony. They did the same as mourners attempted to march toward Feriköy Cemetery, and were ultimately the ones to transport her coffin to the ceremony. In life and death, Bölek was a target of state repression, a narrative that repeats itself much too often in the stories of Kurdish women who stood with movements of freedom.
Helin Bölek’s acts of resistance and solidarity are a testament to Kurdish women’s strength and integral role in liberatory struggles. A folk singer, her story reveals that Kurdish resilience and cultural preservation blossoms in diverse forms, such as music and art.
