the turkish pop star Gulsen Colakoglu was arrested awaiting trial on charges of “inciting or insulting the public to hatred and enmity” after she made a joke about religious schools in Turkey, according to the state-run Anadolu news agency.
The allegations appear to relate to a video circulating on social media of a Gulsen concert in April, when she joked about one of the musicians.
He “graduated in Imam Hatip (religious schools). That’s where your perverted side comes from,” the singer said.
Several Twitter users shared the video on Thursday with a hashtag calling for his arrest and saying it is offensive to associate schools with perverts.
Gulsen denies he committed any crime and is appealing from prison, according to his lawyer Emek Emre.
After his arrest, Gulsen shared a message on his official Twitter and Instagram accounts, apologizing to “anyone who was offended” by the joke and saying it was distorted by “malicious people intent on polarizing our country.”
“I made a joke with my colleagues, with whom I worked for many years in the business. It was published by people who intend to polarize society,” she said.
“In defending the freedom I believe in, I see myself thrown to the radical end I criticize. I apologize to anyone who was offended by my speech in the video,” she said.
She later said in an affidavit that it was an “unfortunate joke” and asked to be released, saying she had a child depending on her and would go to court or a police station when necessary, according to Anadolu.
Gulsen has been targeted by conservative Turkish groups for his revealing stage clothes and support for the LGBTQ community.
The Muslim-majority country is officially secular, but highly polarized on issues related to secularism, religion, women’s rights, and LGBTQ rights.
Imam Hatip schools, which teach religious studies alongside the Turkish curriculum, grew in the two decades that the conservative Justice and Development Party (AKP) is in power.
Schools are known for training young people to become imams or preachers. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan attended the school, as did many AKP party members.
Controversy in Turkey
Reactions to the arrest came from ordinary Turks, celebrities and even political parties.
Following his arrest, social media posts showed Gulsen’s fans in a packed football stadium singing his songs in solidarity.
Award-winning British-Turkish novelist Elif Shafak called for Gulsen’s release, as did other cultural figures.
“I deeply regret the arrest of artist @gulsen. She was targeted for courageously advocating women’s rights, LGBT+ rights, secularism, democracy and pluralism. This is a lynching campaign. It’s not cool or conscious. Free immediately. # gulsenserbestbırakılsın,” she tweeted.
Iconic Turkish pop star Tarkan also took to Twitter on Friday, writing that “this injustice to Gulsen must end and Gulsen must be released immediately.”
“Those who prosecute without arrest and sometimes even release without trial, those who sexually abuse children, murder women, rape women, but when it comes to Gulsen, they act quickly. Our legal system, which ignores the corrupt, steals, breaks the law, kills nature, kills animals, uses religion as a tool for their own fanatical ideas and polarizes society, arrests Gulsen in one fell swoop,” he also wrote.
AKP members defended the arrest, with AKP spokesman Omer Celik saying that “inciting hatred is not an art form” in a Twitter post.
The Turkish Minister of Treasury and Finance, Dr. Nurettin Nebati, tweeted: “Our Imam Hatip Schools are our distinctive institutions that raise generations equipped with our national and moral values and have moral maturity. I strongly condemn this distorted language and the distorted mindset behind it, which targets our young people who study in our Imam Hatip schools, and I find this unacceptable.”
Meanwhile, the leader of Turkey’s main opposition party described the backlash against Gulsen as a fabricated controversy intended to “turn our young people against each other”.
“The winds of peace have long been blowing among young people from different walks of life. The purpose (of prison) is to take a joke that has outlived its purpose and set our young people against each other. It’s more to stay in power, and more to steal and steal,” Kemal Kilicdaroglu wrote on Twitter.
Presidential and parliamentary elections in Turkey are scheduled for early next summer.
Source: CNN Brasil
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