DIYARBAKIR, Turkey — The Smurfs, Maya the Bee and SpongeBob SquarePants finally started speaking Kurdish in Turkey last year, courtesy of Zarok TV, the country’s first and only Kurdish-language channel for children. But their voices were silenced last week as the channel fell victim to the Turkish government's continued purging since the July 15 failed coup.

The station’s debut in March 2015 came as the latest in a series of hard-won cultural freedoms for Turkey’s Kurds who, until the early 1990s, were banned even from speaking their language. The channel was meant to be more than just a pastime for children, doubling as a vessel to teach them their mother tongue and help them maintain a bond with it.

Only 19 months later, Zarok TV (Kid TV) was back in the headlines, this time as the first children’s channel to be shut down for backing “separatist and subversive” activities in Turkey. The Sept. 28 closure order, which covered 23 radio and television stations, took effect abruptly late in the evening, leaving many people bewildered in front of empty screens. It was part of the massive crackdown Ankara has waged, using extraordinary powers made available by a state of emergency, against suspected coup supporters and others. Though the coup bid was blamed on Fethullah Gulen’s community, the clampdown has extended to Kurds and other “dissident” groups.

Many social media users went into lampoon mode, asking, “Who is the separatist: SpongeBob or Papa Smurf?”