Drop All Charges Against Rojhilat Aksoy!

The ICFR calls on the Turkish authorities to drop the accusations against filmmaker and festival organizer Rojhilat Aksoy, amid a growing crackdown on Kurdish and Armenian films and filmmakers

On April 6, Kurdish filmmaker Rojhilat Aksoy will be standing trial in the southeastern Turkish town of Diyarbakır, facing criminal charges under Article 301 of the Turkish penal code. The charges allege that she has “publicly insulted the Turkish nation” by screening the animated Armenian Genocide documentary Aurora’s Sunrise last December on behalf of the Middle-Eastern Cinema Academy Association, for which Aksoy served as vice-president at the time.

Since its inception in 2012, the Middle-Eastern Cinema Academy Association has been promoting, screening and producing Kurdish films and filmmakers across the region and elsewhere. Their work involves the annual Amed Film Festival, which pops up in city halls and other locations across southeastern Türkiye, as well as the production of short films and series revolving around Kurdish stories and the Kurdish language.

In recent years, policy changes in Türkiye on a local and federal level have often impeded the work of Aksoy and her colleagues, with last-minute cancellations of screenings and festival editions and difficulties raising funding for new productions. The Association aligns itself with marginalized peoples across Türkiye and elsewhere, and its focus now includes Armenian filmmakers as well as collaborations with Catalonia, among others.

The film Aurora’s Sunrise, which won the Audience Award at the 2023 Movies That Matter Film Festival in The Hague, blends animation and archival footage from a 1919 film in the public domain to shine a light on how Aurora Mardiganian survived Türkiye’s genocide of the Armenians thanks to the compassion shown by ordinary Kurdish and Turkish people. As the filmmaker, Inna Sahakyan, tells us, “Ms. Aksoy has no connection to the production of the film and is being prosecuted simply for her role in the festival application (...) It is heartbreaking to see a cultural worker targeted for sharing a story of survival and resilience.”

The backlash against Rojhilat Aksoy’s and the Association’s decision to screen the film last December is part of a deeply worrying development in which Kurdish and Armenian voices and stories are actively oppressed by the Turkish authorities. Since the start of 2026, the ICFR has received reports of at least four Kurdish filmmakers whose films have been banned from being screened in Türkiye or included in Turkish film festivals.

As our friends at Turkish film association Altyazı Fasikül tell us: “The revival of Article 301 of the Turkish Penal Code through this case signals a new phase in Turkey's climate of censorship (...) The prosecution of a film specifically for its screening in Diyarbakır points to a deliberate suppression of the cultural and political rights of Kurdish people in Turkey. We are confronted with a systematic effort to block any reckoning with history.” 

Rojhilat Aksoy has rejected the accusations, stating that organizing the public screening was an act protected by freedom of speech and artistic expression, as well as being conducted within the legal framework of cultural and academic discussion. Article 301, the law cited in the indictment, has been used in previous cases involving writers, journalists, artists and scholars whose work touched on sensitive historical topics in Türkiye. Altyazı Fasikül adds that back in 2007, this article even fueled the hatred leading to the murder of Armenian journalist Hrant Dink.

The ICFR calls on the Turkish authorities to end their oppressive treatment of Kurdish and Armenian film workers, and stands firmly with Rojhilat Aksoy and her colleagues in their right to freely express themselves and bring any story — Kurdish, Armenian, or otherwise — to audiences near and far. We call on the Turkish authorities, especially the regional authorities of Diyarbakır, to immediately drop all the charges against Rojhilat Aksoy, and for the international film community to stand with her.
 

The International Coalition for Filmmakers at Risk