Leading actor questioned for portrayal of fictional ‘terrorist’

A leading Turkish actor has been questioned by Turkish security police on suspicion of terrorist propaganda over a role she played seven years ago in the French television spy series Le Bureau des Legendes.

Melisa Sozen in the film Winter Sleep. The Turkish actor portrayed a Kurdish double agent in the acclaimed French TV series Le Bureau des Legendes

A leading Turkish actor has been questioned by Turkish security police on suspicion of terrorist propaganda over a role she played seven years ago in the French television spy series Le Bureau des Legendes.

Melisa Sozen, 39, was summoned to police headquarters in Istanbul on Monday after being attacked on social media for months over for her role as Esrin Gunei, a double agent Kurdish fighter based in Syria, who appears in seven episodes of the show’s third season, which was broadcast in 2017.

Sozen appeared in a uniform resembling that of the YPG Kurdish militant group in the series, known as The Bureau in its English-language version, about a section of the Directorate-General for External Security, the French foreign intelligence service.

After her release after interrogation, she told local media: “The series has not been broadcast in Turkey. I am someone who loves her country and her nation.” She told police that she had been unaware she had worn the uniform of a combatant of the YPG, which is deemed by Turkey to be affiliated with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, a banned US-backed militant group based in northern Syria.

After criticism on social media in the summer, Sozen rejected accusations that she had

Mathieu Kassovitz portrayed the central character Malotru in the French TV series Le Bureau des Legendes

After criticism on social media in the summer, Sozen rejected accusations that she had promoted the YPG and said there had been no glorification of any terrorist group in the show. “I do not accept the false accusations thrown at me,” she wrote, adding that she was surprised that the matter had emerged seven years after the show was first broadcast.

Sozen spent time in France learning the language after making an impact with her role in the series. She gained international acclaim in 2014 for her performance in Winter Sleep, a Turkish drama directed by Nuri Bilge Ceylan. Adapted from Anton Chekhov’s novella The Wife, which won the Palme d’Or at Cannes.

The police investigation into Sozen follows a series of arrests and trials targeting figures from Turkey’s culture, media and political world.

Critics of the government of President Erdogan deplored what they depicted as harassment. “Is there any other country that opened an investigation against the actor who played the role of a member of an organisation in a series?” Tugay Bek, a Turkish lawyer and activist, tweeted: “If an actor plays a murderer tomorrow, will the homicide bureau launch an investigation?”

The Times