LONDON — A popular Iranian rapper has been detained in Turkey and faces deportation to Iran after the Turkish police acted on an Interpol red notice to detain him, friends of the rapper and Turkish news media reported.
Amir Hussein Maqsoodlo, better known as Amir Tataloo, was detained at an immigration office in the Fatih district of Istanbul, according to a music producer who was with him. He is being held at a detention facility for undocumented immigrants in eastern Istanbul near one of the city’s airports.
Mr. Tataloo, 31, has been one of Iran’s most prominent rappers for the past decade. At one point several years ago he had some four million followers on Instagram.
But Iranian clerics have long insisted that rap music is the devil’s work, and censure the lifestyle of rappers and the wearing of tattoos. Mr. Tataloo has had numerous run-ins with the authorities over his music; his hard-partying lifestyle; his outspoken attitude; and the tattoos he flaunts.
He spent four months in Evin prison in Iran two years ago, and has frequently been detained for short periods over his tattoos, according to the music producer, known as MarG Lotfabadi, who was with him when he was detained in Istanbul.
Yet even the strait-laced Iranian government has used Mr. Tataloo’s popularity to record a nationalistic video vaunting Iran’s military effort in the Persian Gulf in 2017. Standing on the Damavand, a frigate in the Caspian Sea, Mr. Tataloo sang that “an armed Persian Gulf” is Iran’s “absolute right.” He has also been allowed to travel abroad to play concerts.
Mr. Tataloo has always been hard to pin down, said Nahid Siamdoust, a lecturer at Yale University and author of a book on political music in Iran.
In his early career, she said, he was known for making bold political and social statements that were well received by music fans opposed to the government. But in the mid-2010s, he started recording tracks with nationalistic messages, including the one set on the Iranian frigate.
During the 2017 presidential race, he even supported Ebrahim Raisi, the most hard-line and conservative candidate, appearing in a photo opportunity with him, tattoos showing.
Mr. Tataloo’s millions of fans were never sure whether he genuinely supported the government or was simply pretending to do so to get permits to perform, Ms. Siamdoust said. “He became a real trickster figure,” she said.
After Mr. Tataloo left Iran in 2018, he began openly criticizing the government, once insulting a revered religious figure. That switch could be what has angered the government, Ms. Siamdoust said.
“He was on the inside and then he made very insulting comments against the whole establishment,” she said. “One of his newest music videos pictures himself in an Iranian court arguing his case for why he’s never going back.”
Mr. Lotfabadi said Mr. Tataloo was not political, but rather an artist who spoke freely. He said he was asked at the last minute to play songs on the frigate and went along, only later realizing he had been used.
“He has never supported the government,” he said. “They don’t like him because he is speaking very openly about society.”
Turkish media reported that Mr. Tataloo was wanted in Iran for drug-related offenses. But Mr. Lotfabadi said the police had not mentioned that when they detained the performer on Tuesday, saying only that a red notice had been issued by Interpol.
He said Mr. Tataloo did not espouse violence, and had spoken out against the slaughtering of animals. Many of his tattoos are of animals, Mr. Lotfabadi said, and others were of his mother, and of his heroes Bruce Lee and the Argentine soccer player Diego Maradona.
Mr. Tataloo entered Turkey last summer and had applied for temporary residency in Istanbul, as many in the growing community of exiled Iranians have done. He is scheduled to play a concert in East London on Feb. 9, and already has a British visa organized, Mr. Lotfabadi said.
Turkey is a popular spot for some Iranian hip-hop musicians, where they organize concerts, usually selling out. But Turkey is not necessarily a hospitable place for rappers.
Turkish rappers have come under the scrutiny of the government of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, which says that some have encouraged drug use with their music. Some Turkish rappers have been detained in jail for weeks at a time.
The rapper Ezhel, a rising star of Turkish hip-hop, was jailed last year, accused of promoting marijuana use in his songs. After a month in prison, Ezhel, whose real name is Omer Sercan Ipekcioglu, was acquitted of one charge and sentenced on another.
People on Persian-language social media have compared Mr. Tataloo’s case with that of Ruhollah Zam, a critic of Iran’s government who disappeared from Iraq last year and ended up back in Iran.
Under pressure to curb immigration to Europe, Turkey runs a strict regime of deporting undocumented immigrants, but many foreigners, including refugees and exiles from neighboring Muslim countries, are granted temporary residence permits.
Alex Marshall contributed reporting from London.
Source: Music - nytimes.com
