Musa Anter, also known as "Apê Musa", was a Kurdish writer, journalist and intellectual and was assassinated by Turkish JITEMin September 1992.
Biography
He was born in the Eskimağara village. Originally named Şeyhmus Elmas after Sheikh Şeyhmus, and Elmas was the surname given by the Turkish authorities, he later wanted to be called Musa Anter. He completed his primary education in Mardin, and then studied at junior and senior high school in Adana. When he was a student, he had been to Syria during his summer holidays and got acquaintance with Kurdish nationalist intellectuals such as Celadet and Kamuran Bedir Khan, Kadri and Ekrem Cemilpaşa, Dr. Nafiz, Nuri Zaza, Nuri Dersimi, Qedrîcan, Osman Sabri, Haco Agha and his son Hasan, Emînê Perîxanê's son Şikriye Emîn, Mala Elyê Unus, Teufo Ciziri and Cigerxwîn. In 1944, he married Ayşe Hanım, the daughter of. He was actively promoting the use of the Kurdish language with his journalistic work, which caused him quite some turmoil during his lifetime. After in 1959 he published the poem Qimil in Kurdish language in the newspaper Ilery Yurt, Anter was arrested. His arrest caused a wave of Kurdish protests, in which aftermath a trial against 50 Kurdish intellectuals began, which was known as the. He eventually had to serve some time prison but was released soon after due to an amnesty. In 1963 Musa Anter and other 23 intellectuals were arrested and were sentenced to 3 years for allegedly having attempted to establish a Kurdish state. He was released in 1964. In 1970 he was one of the charged in the trial of the Revolutionary Cultural Eastern Hearths members. In June 1990 he was one of the 81 founding members of the People's Labor Party. He later supported the establishments of the Mesopotamian Cultural Center in 1991 and Kurdish Institute in Istanbul in 1992.
Assassination
Anter was shot at a festival in 1992, in an incident in which Orhan Miroğlu was seriously injured. Some Turkish sources claimed that Abdülkadir Aygan, who was PKK militant and surrendered in 1985, then recruited as part of the first staff of JİTEM, had said he had been part of a JİTEM unit, along with a "Hamit" from Şırnak, which had assassinated Musa Anter. Other Turkish sources claimed that the perpetrator was PKK defector Murat Ipek who received orders from the Turkish state's contract killerMahmut Yıldırım, or Yeşil himself. After long investigations, Turkish Gendarmerie Intelligence and Counter-Terrorism was found guilty of Anter's assassination and Turkey was fined related to his murder in 2006 by the European Court of Human Rights, who sentenced Turkey to a fine of 28,500 Euros. A Diyarbakır court in 2013 allegedly charged four individuals with Anter's murder, including Mahmut Yıldırım and Abdülkadir Aygan.
Legacy
He is viewed as an important and influential Kurdish poet and author. He wrote for numerous newspapers such as Ilery Yurt, Deng, Yön, Özgür Gündem amongst others and was also the author of Dictionary in Kurdish language. In 1997, the Turkish Human Rights Association organized a peace initiative called Musa Anter Peace Train.
