Pervin Chakar

During her eleven-year stay in Italy she performed for the first time at the Rosetum [it] in Milan in 2006.^[6] Later she sang as Rosina in The Barber of Seville, Tytania in Britten's A Midsummer Night's Dream, Megacles in the L'Olympiade by Josef Mysliveček.^[6] She has sung in several languages of the ancient Mesopotamia such as Armenian, Kurdish, Zazaki^[4] and performed Kurdish folksongs from the Ottoman Armenian composer Komitas for his 150th anniversary in the Cemal Reşit Rey Concert Hall in Istanbul.^[7] Since 2016 she lives in Baden-Baden, Germany.^[8]

She has only in 2011 decided to learn the Kurdish language, after having been confronted with news on the Roboski massacre in which several Kurdish villagers were killed and mistaken for militants of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK).^[9] From then on, she learned songs from Kurdish singers and became a strong supporter of performing in the Kurdish language^[9][10] also having composed a melody to the Kurdish poem Qimil by Musa Anter.^[9][8]

In 2022, Chakar claimed that her concert at Mardin Artuklu University, which opened the first Kurdish course in Turkey,^[11] was cancelled because there were Kurdish songs in her repertoire.^[12][13][14] A former lawmaker of the Justice and Development Party (AKP) Abdurrahman Kurt attempted to weigh with the University's rector, but was not able to change their mind.^[12] The Turkish daily Yeni Şafak claimed that the reason given for the cancellation was that she wanted a ticketed event in a hall meant for free concerts.^[15] Students that went to a Spring festival organized by the same university posted videos of artists singing in Kurdish, contradicting her claim.^[15]

• Media related to Pervin Chakar at Wikimedia Commons