Şanar Yurdatapan is a songwriter and composer who campaigns for freedom of expression, particularly against the prosecution of publishers in his home country, Turkey.

Yurdatapan won the 2002 Index award for Circumvention of Censorship, to his amusement this was the same year former Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi won the award for Services to Censorship.

In 2013, Yurdatapan and Index met at the IFEX General Meeting and Strategy Conference, which he attended on behalf of Initiative for Freedom of Expression; he talked to Index about the Gezi Park protests which were going on at the time. Now, Yurdatapan speaks about the positive effects of international recognition.

Explore the Index on Censorship Freedom of Expression Awards

This article was posted on 15 Dec 2014 at indexoncensorship.org