Hozan Cane tries to live a quiet life in the one-bedroom apartment she shares with her daughter in Cologne, Germany. Her soft voice, tinged with a polite Turkish accent, hints at her tiredness. She’s recovering from heart surgery. A Kurdish musician and asylum-seeker who initially fled Turkey in the 1990s, she now spends her days taking walks by the river, baking bread, writing song lyrics and playing board games with her daughter in the evenings. But despite the peace of this life, the events of six years ago keep pulling her back.
In the summer of 2018, Hozan traveled from her home in Germany to Edirne, a city in northwestern Turkey, to sing for a pro-Kurdish People’s Democratic Party election campaign. She recounted that fateful journey to New Lines. She said she was singing traditional songs in her usual stage costume: a vibrant and flowing dress adorned with intricate patterns and shimmering sequins. As the event wrapped up, around 50 supporters boarded a bus to head to their next campaign location. Kurdish songs filled the bus and voices rose in unison before the driver suddenly slammed on the brakes and the music died.
Headlights flooded the bus through its windows as soldiers stormed aboard, their boots thudding on the steps. They scanned each face, eyes sharp, and combing through the passenger they repeatedly shouted, “Hozan!”
Hozan was arrested and taken to a remote military post, where she was held in a wooden shack. A thick file was placed in front of her and she was told that if she signed the documents, she could leave immediately. “I knew it was a threat,” Hozan says, adding that she feared she could be falsely implicated in numerous crimes. “I refused to sign anything in the end.”
The next morning, a guard brought her breakfast. She ate the meal but collapsed soon after on the cold, hard floor of her cell. She was rushed to a local hospital, where she stayed for two days. She believes the breakfast was poisoned. “I’m still not well,” Hozan says. “After I was poisoned, the skin on my entire body peeled off, I lost all my hair, even my toenails fell off. It’s still happening now.”
From that day on, she vomited persistently and her body began to undergo a strange skin-shedding process. Access to her detailed hospital records was later denied to her lawyers.
Hozan faced court, where she was accused of being a member of a terrorist organization, insulting Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and defaming Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the founder of the Turkish republic. She has vehemently denied all charges. According to prosecutors, the charges were based on her Kurdish songs and social media posts. A judge sentenced her to seven years in a maximum-security prison. “Prison left me with every possible illness, both mentally and physically — there’s nothing it didn’t ruin in my health,” Hozan says.
Turkey sits on Europe’s doorstep and has received billions of dollars in funding from the European Union over the past decade, including for controversial “removal centers” to house Europe-bound refugees and migrants. And the country is locking up an ever-increasing number of its own citizens, with many thousands of those inmates, including Hozan, complaining of human rights abuses while in prison.
The number of detainees and convicts in Turkey increased from 55,870 in 2005 to 342,526 in 2024, according to the General Directorate of Prisons and Detention Houses. Turkey continues to hold the highest number of prisoners in Europe, according to a 2023 Council of Europe report.
Much of this is due to the failed coup d’etat against Erdogan in 2016, which killed at least 240 people and injured over 2,000. In response, the government cracked down on political opponents, jailing tens of thousands on charges ostensibly related to “terrorism.”
The term “terrorism” is loosely defined in Turkish law, including so-called crimes against the constitutional order and the internal and external security of the state. It is often used to criminalize freedom of expression and peaceful assembly.
After her arrest, Hozan was left in solitary confinement for a week. She recounted how, in one unsettling incident, three guards allegedly came in and forcefully removed her clothes during a strip search. She sat on a wooden chair while one guard took one leg, another took the other leg and someone else held her hands behind her back. Another guard came and forcefully inserted their hand into her vagina, claiming to be searching for heroin. She was left bleeding.
After staying in Edirne for about a month, Hozan was transferred to Istanbul where the cell conditions were harsh. Sixty women were packed into a space no larger than 320 square feet — about the size of eight average public bathrooms combined — along with a foul-smelling open toilet. There was only access to hot water for half an hour a week and minimal food rations, consisting of a spoonful of food twice a day and a few pieces of bread.
In those cramped quarters, two women shared each bed, but the inmates gave Hozan her own top bunk to allow her to write. The other inmates respected her space, saying, “She’s writing a book, writing songs, don’t disturb her.”
One night, prison guards raided the cell. They ransacked it, tearing apart newspapers, clothes, notebooks, pens and anything they could find. “It was a terrifying moment, like a war had broken out,” Hozan says. She found she had nothing left but a single bedsheet, with everything destroyed, even her notebook. One of her cellmates, who was taking a bath during the raid, had all her clothes torn apart, leaving her naked. Hozan gave her the sheet and the woman walked around in it for three days.
In the midst of all this, Hozan felt the need to write again. She had no materials to work with but noticed a bird’s nest outside her window. From that nest, she took a small burnt stick. More than 1,200 miles away from home, she composed one of her most popular songs, “Zindan” (“Dungeon” in English).
“Prison is a place for lions,” she wrote on the wall of her cell using the charred stick. “Cowards and jackals, they only keep lions in such places. They keep them there because of their own fears.”
Hozan’s experience is far from unique. As well as locking up an ever-increasing number of people, Turkey stands accused of numerous human rights violations against inmates, with some research suggesting that such abuses are increasing each year.
Over the past few years, organizations including the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture, the Council of Europe Committee for the Prevention of Torture and the U.N. Committee Against Torture have expressed concerns about Turkey’s failures to fulfill its international human rights obligations. The Human Rights Association of Turkey (IHD) received 23,899 reports of human rights violations from detainees in 2023, more than double the 10,789 violations it recorded in 2022.
At least 2,258 people have died in prison since 2018, 42 of them in 2023, as a result of these violations, according to the IHD.
A report by the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor on human rights in Turkey found “credible reports of enforced disappearances, torture, or cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment by the government or its agents, arbitrary arrests or detentions, serious problems with judicial independence, and the presence of political prisoners or detainees.”
Instances of abuse keep coming to light. In March 2024, an image of a 75-year-old woman being detained in a sack-like stretcher was widely shared on social media. Hatice Yildiz, who has mild dementia, was sentenced to four years in prison for “providing financial support to a terrorist organization.” Yildiz says the money was for her imprisoned daughter and cellmate. Her family’s lawyer says that Yildiz should be released from jail immediately on medical grounds and that her imprisonment is worsening her dementia.
“Put an end to this injustice,” Yildiz’s son, Alper Yildiz, said in an interview with Arti Gercek. “What harm could my mother cause once she’s released? Search your conscience; we are urgently pleading for her release.”
Lawyers, human rights activists and politicians have all said that victims face a deeply entrenched culture of impunity. Their chances of obtaining justice are slim within a criminal justice system that often prioritizes the interests of the state and its officials over ordinary citizens.
Ahmet Ceylan, a lawyer working with IHD, explains that this is mainly because “effective investigations are not conducted regarding torture and ill-treatment. If there are any investigations, the information is not shared with the public and the policy of impunity prevails.”
He adds that complaints filed by inmates are not taken into consideration and no action is taken against the perpetrators. Instead, disciplinary penalties are imposed on those who file complaints and inmates are exiled to different prison locations.
New Lines contacted the Turkish Ministry of Justice multiple times for comment on alleged human rights violations in prisons, including against Hozan Cane, but received no response. Bekir Bozdag, a former justice minister and member of the ruling Justice and Development Party, said in an official statement on state-run media that “there is absolutely no torture in prisons.”
Many who have left Turkey have initiated lawsuits against the country for human rights violations. As of 2023, Turkey is involved in nearly one-third of the cases — a staggering 23,400 of a total of 68,450 — pending before the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR).
Hozan’s ordeal came to an end after two years and 102 days in prison, during which her weight dropped from 125 to 82 pounds. In 2020, the Turkish Supreme Court overturned the terrorism charges against her and she was released.
Hozan explained that she was released thanks to pressure from German officials and her daughter’s social media campaign. Initially, she faced travel restrictions, but they were later lifted, allowing her to leave Turkey and appeal the sentence from Germany.
In October 2024, Hozan’s prison sentence for “insulting the president” was ruled a violation of her freedom of expression by the ECHR, which ordered Turkey to pay her compensation.
Despite her return to Cologne, slipping back into everyday life has been difficult. “You walk out, reenter society, try to integrate,” she explains, “your body is free but your soul hasn’t come out.”
“Now I try to avoid writing songs that are political,” Hozan says. “But no matter what I do, even if I don’t intend to, my pen touches it — it touches those suffering under politics. I can’t write 100% soft love songs because my pen slips; no matter what I do, it always ends up there.”
Since returning home, Hozan has been fighting to maintain her health. “No one will believe me,” she says with a small laugh, but the illnesses linger, a constant reminder of prison. In July, Hozan was hospitalized and had four stents put into her heart. Most of her days are now spent walking, singing or writing.
Cologne, the “egg-shaped” city nestled by the Rhine River which she loves to sit by, has become Hozan’s safe haven. Thousands of ships pass by each day but it’s the quiet beauty of nature that she loves. The low skyline, with most buildings standing only two or three stories high, makes the forests and river stand out even more. “It’s a city intertwined with nature,” she says.
“My thoughts are often scattered,” she admits. Focusing on her music feels impossible some days, and no matter how many distractions she tries, none of them help. Only walking brings clarity, a lightness in her head that helps her compose better. She walks 15 to 19 miles a day, from her house to the river or the city center and back.
Between these moments, she takes care of her home, preparing her own meals — fish, salad, bulgur pilaf and soup — because, for her, nothing prepared outside her home feels healthy. She avoids painkillers and medicine as much as possible.
It’s been two years since Hozan’s release and yet she feels trapped. She longs to free her soul but admits, “I don’t know how.” Spending time with her daughter in their apartment, Hozan finds some peace. Her daughter taught her how to play Okey, a Turkish tile game. “She told me it would help with my overthinking and it really does,” Hozan says. It’s a refreshing break from her usual focus on art. They play a round every night and Hozan laughs as she explains that “now she loses every night.”
During her time in prison, she created some of her most beautiful works, writing over 50 songs and several books, but since her return, she has struggled to recapture that creative flow. “I’m very limited now,” she admits. She is currently working on two books set to be released in the next year. “I don’t believe there is any semblance of justice left in Turkey,” Hozan says. “This country has lost its sense of life and humanity. It will take centuries to recover.”
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