45-year-old musician Onur Sener, a 2013 contestant on Turkey’s version of the TV talent show The Voice, was killed on Sunday night by three patrons of a bar in Ankara because he did not know the words to a song they requested.
According to witnesses quoted by Hurriyet Daily News, Sener’s assailants entered the bar in Turkey’s Cankaya entertainment district late on Sunday night and asked him to play a song he was unfamiliar with. When the musician said he did not know the song, a verbal altercation ensued.
The assailants followed Sener when he left the bar after closing time and attacked him with glass bottles. Sener died in a local hospital after broken glass penetrated his throat.
Two of the attackers were identified on Tuesday by the Turkish Ministry of Labor and Social Security as labor inspectors named Ilker Karakas and Ali Gunduz. The ministry said both have been dismissed from public service.
Karakas made a statement in which he claimed Sener “insulted” him when he approached the stage at the bar and asked for a song the musician did not know.
Karakas claimed Sener initiated a hostile confrontation after leaving the bar, and because he feared for the safety of women in his company, he threw a beer bottle at the angry singer.
Gunduz also claimed his group fought back in self-defense after Sener attacked them. A third suspect, Semih Soyalp, joined Gunduz in accusing Karakas of committing the murder.
Ankara prosecutors said on Wednesday the security cameras outside the bar were not functioning, possibly because they were tampered with after the assault. The cameras and copies of recordings they made during the evening were seized by the police cybercrimes unit. Three suspects are in custody for the assault, while two others — apparently the women Karakas referred to — were released on probation and told not to leave the country.
Sener has a five-year-old daughter named Ceyla, whose legal representative said on Thursday she was gently informed of her father’s death with the aid of child psychiatrists. Several Turkish artists announced they would hold benefit concerts and donate the proceeds to Ceyla’s care.
Musicians and other artists held demonstrations for Sener on Thursday, blaming the deterioration of “economic, political, and social conditions,” and tensions from Turkey’s authoritarian politics, for creating an atmosphere in which a popular musician could be brutally killed for not knowing the words to a song.
A statement issued by one group of performers accused the Turkish government of taking advantage of the Wuhan coronavirus pandemic to clamp down on dissent and suppress artistic freedom.
“Every event, every concert, every festival that the reactionary mentality dislikes is banned for trivial reasons. Threats to artists, intimidation, and punishments are now voiced at the highest pitch,” the group said.
Speakers at another demonstration complained about the “destruction of the education system” and “hostility towards art and artists” as contributing factors to the Sener killing.
“We musicians are a profession that has neither social security, job security, nor life security,” said Hasan Kal, president of a performer’s association in Antalya.
Kal noted there has been a surge of violence in recent years against musicians, who are highly vulnerable once they leave the stage.
“What should we musicians do?” Kal asked. “Music is our life, we breathe with music, we live with music. They are trying to take our lives away from us with pressure, insults, and threats.”