A PROMINENT Turkish composer and human rights activist who was due to visit Ireland next week has been detained by police in Istanbul.
Mr Sanar Yurdatapan, who is being held at the Anti Terror branch of Istanbul Police Headquarters, was arrested on Wednesday after he returned from Germany. He was due to speak at public meetings in Dublin, Cork and Limerick next Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, and at Amnesty International's annual conference in Galway on Friday.
Turkish police also raided the composer's office in Uskudar, Istanbul, early on Thursday morning, and detained the cleaning woman and two staff members, the director of Amnesty International's Irish Section, Ms Mary Lawlor, said in Dublin yesterday.
Ms Lawlor said that in "symbolic solidarity with Sanar" Amnesty's planned meetings would go ahead next week, with a prominent Irish writer, artist or musician speaking on his behalf at each venue.
"We call on Dick Spring and Gay Mitchell to ensure he has access to his lawyers and family and to demand that he is is charged or released immediately," she added.
Mr Yurdatapan is the prime mover of the Freedom of Thought initiative, a group of more than than 1,000 intellectuals, academics, journalists, writers and artists. The group has focused its activities on the continued imprisonment of people for non violent opinions, with members republishing under their own names any text banned by the Turkish government.
Two weeks ago, Mr Yurdatapan spoke in Belfast of his imprisonment in Turkey last year. "Your little letters and cards are like bombs when they drop into the offices of Ministers and government officials. When the cards and letters arrived into our barracks they were like rays of sunshine. We need the sunshine," he said.
Mr Yurdatapan was held in Ankara Central Closed Prison for a month before being released last November. He lived in exile in Germany from the late 1970s until 1991, and was deprived of his Turkish citizenship because of his strong public criticism of the generals who seized power in 1980.