The Turkish-Kurdish artist and journalist Zehra Dogan has been released from a Turkish jail after serving 25 months for “spreading terrorist propaganda” according to a Turkish court.
Early 2016, Dogan, who is the editor of the feminist news agency Jinha, was reporting and painting from Nusaybin, a city in the a largely Kurdish province of Mardin. In March 2017, the Mardin second high criminal court in Turkey sentenced Dogan to two years and ten months in prison for posting a painting on social media that depicted the destroyed Kurdish town of Nusaybin, with Turkish flags draped over the smouldering ruins (her work is based on a photograph).
"I was waiting for the day when my sentence would come to an end, I am very happy. I extend my thanks to every single person who supported me during this process," Dogan told the Turkish press agency Bianet after her release. She resorted to painting on scrap paper in prison using her menstrual blood; an exhibition of her works, organised by Amnesty International, was shown at the city library in Detmold, North-Rhine Westphalia in Germany last summer.
The artist's arrest is the subject of a mural by UK street artist Banksy which was unveiled in New York last March. The 70-foot mural features a tally of the days Dogan spent in prison.
