Read in
In authoritarian states, artistic expression is an oft-trodden path for expressing dissent. And so Zehra Dogan, a young Kurdish artist and journalist, took to the easel to pour out her emotions about the 2015 leveling by Turkish security forces of Nusaybin, a Kurdish town intertwined with the Syrian town of Qamishli on the opposite side.
In the foreground of her best known piece, an armored vehicle is portrayed as a dark, menacing scorpion-like creature. Humans file resignedly into its gaping jaws. Turkish flags hang over gutted buildings and a giant plume of smoke billows overhead in a perfectly evoked dystopian scene.
