Summer is here and it is wedding season across Turkey. But for some Kurdish men, women and children, joyful dancing and singing Kurdish political folk songs at wedding parties or elsewhere has resulted in arrests and charges of “spreading terrorist propaganda,” a crime punishable by up to five years in prison. The authorities’ actions in arresting and criminalizing people for such legal activities are a clear abuse of arrest powers.

A TikTok video of women dancing a halay – a line dance popular in Turkey – at a wedding reception to a song mentioning guerrilla fighters served as a pretext for police to arrest six people in the town of Kurtalan in southeastern Turkey’s Siirt province on July 26. The governor of Siirt issued a statement on social media announcing the arrests and vowing that the “fight against terrorist organizations will continue with persistence and determination.” Two women and three girls were remanded in custody by the court. A day earlier, police in the southern city of Mersin arrested eight men and a boy based on a TikTok video that weeks earlier showed people dancing a halay to Kurdish songs. A court ruled that the nine be remanded in custody. Arrests followed in other cities and towns, including Istanbul and most recently Osmaniye, and at least 34 people spent weeks in custody before appearing in court.

The case of those arrested in Mersin has yet to be heard, but the three women and two girls in the Kurtalan case will face their first court hearing in Siirt on August 16. The prosecutor should demand the immediate release and acquittal of all five.

The European Court of Human Rights has ruled that singing popular folk songs or poems, shouting general slogans, including at public gatherings, or making references to the 40-year-old uprising of the armed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) against the Turkish military are protected expressions of opinion. The content of the songs and slogans from the wedding celebrations and elsewhere neither incites violence nor poses an imminent danger to individuals that could justify criminal prosecution.

Turning Kurdish wedding celebrations into crime scenes through the arrest and prosecution of guests and musicians is just the latest example of how Turkish authorities have been abusing the criminal justice system for decades to target legitimate Kurdish activities and political expression.