During his high school studies, the Dersim rebellion led by Seyid Riza was going on, which lead to some frictions with his Turkish classmates following which he was shortly detained.
[9] During his time at the university, he had often been to Syria during his summer holidays and came into acquaintance with Kurdish nationalist intellectuals[10][11] such as Celadet and Kamuran Bedir Khan, Kadri and Ekrem Cemilpaşa, Dr. Nafiz, Nûredin Zaza, Nuri Dersimi, Qedrîcan, Osman Sabri, Haco Agha and his son Hasan, Emînê Perîxanê's son Şikriye Emîn, Mala Elyê Unus, Teufo Ciziri and Cigerxwîn.
[13] In 1963, Musa Anter and 23 other intellectuals were arrested and sentenced to 3 years for allegedly having attempted to establish an independent Kurdish state.
[21] Ümit Cizre claimed that Abdülkadir Aygan, a former member of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) who had surrendered in 1985,[22] who had been posteriorly recruited as part of the first staff of the JİTEM (the Turkish Gendarmerie's Intelligence and Counter-terrorism Service),[22] reported having been part of a JİTEM unit and, alongside a "Hamit" from Şırnak, had assassinated Musa Anter.
[23] The former Major of the Turkish army Cem Ersever claimed that the murder was facilitated by Alaattin Kanat, a former PKK member who was shortly released during the time of the assassination.
[25] After long investigations, Turkish Gendarmerie Intelligence and Counter-Terrorism was found guilty of Anter's assassination by the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) in 2006, which sentenced Turkey to a fine of 28,500 Euros.
[5] A Diyarbakır court in 2013 allegedly charged four individuals with Anter's murder, including Mahmut Yıldırım (alias "Yeşil") and Abdülkadir Aygan.
[27] He wrote for numerous publications such as İleri Yurt, Deng, Yön, Özgür Gündem, Dicle-Firat, Barış Dünyası amongst others[13] and was also the author of a Kurdish-language dictionary.