Saide İnaç

Saide İnaç — Biography

Saide İnaç, known by the stage name Hozan Canê, was born in 1971 in Karayazı, a district of Erzurum province; after elementary school she continued her education in Adana and Istanbul, studying under Ferqîn Şiyar and Kazım Bora at the ASM and Arif Sağ music schools. As a child she listened to Kurdish-language radio broadcasts from Yerevan and was influenced by singers such as Ayşe Şan and Meryem Xan.

Repeatedly detained and imprisoned during the repression of Kurdish culture in Turkey in the 1980s and 1990s, she served nine months in prison after a 1991 concert in Van and was later shot by unidentified gunmen following another concert, after which she took refuge in Germany, where she worked with the Academy of Kurdish Culture and Arts and released several albums. She also contributed to cinema by directing and starring in "The 74th Genocide in Sinjar", about the ISIS genocide of Yazidis in Shingal.

In 2018, while campaigning for the HDP in Edirne province, she was arrested on a charge of terrorist-organization membership and sentenced in November 2018 to six years and three months in prison, though acquitted of separate sedition and Atatürk-insult charges. A 2019 conviction for insulting the president followed, the same year her daughter was also arrested, and in October 2021 a court in Edirne handed her a further sentence of three years, one month and fifteen days for alleged PKK support. Released in October 2020, she was freed again the same month in 2024 after the European Court of Human Rights ruled the insult conviction a rights violation, and in March 2023 she spoke at the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women.