ISTANBUL.- The singer Gulsen, one of the best-known figures in Turkish pop music, She was arrested in Istanbul after joking about the country’s Islamic schools, and is currently in jail awaiting investigation.
Gulsen Bayraktar Colakoglu, the full name of the 46-year-old artist, was arrested at her home in Istanbul on Thursday night, her lawyer Emek Emre explained to the Turkish newspaper. Hurriyet. The case began in April, when Gulsen joked about one of his musicians.
“His perversion comes from studying at Imam Hatip schools”declared in reference to a chain of religious educational institutions, to which the more than a million young Turks and whose influence and capacity have multiplied exponentially thanks to the Justice and Development party of the president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
The arrest caused this Saturday demonstrations of support for the singer in Istanbul and also generated a reaction of the US State Department.
A State Department spokesman said his administration remains concerned about widespread efforts in Turkey to restrict expression through censorship and judicial harassment following Gulsen’s arrest.
In Istanbul, protesters criticized what they called inconsistency between the inaction of the judiciary in the face of violence against women and the prompt investigation and arrest of the artist. Many also said that Gulsen was actually imprisoned for her liberal views and her support of LGBT+ rights.
“Hundreds of women would be alive today if the men who assaulted other women were caught as quickly as Gulsen was,” organizers of the Istanbul protest told the demonstrators through a loudspeaker.
apology
Before her arrest, the singer posted an apologetic message on her Twitter account, which is followed by more than a million people. “A joke that I shared with my colleagues, with whom I have worked for many years, was spread by those who seek to polarize society”, lament. ”I am an artist who loves her country, believes in equal opportunities, cannot despise anyone and I respect all the values and sensitivities of the country. I do not accept the accusation”, He later stated at the police station.
The process against the singer was opened by the Ministry of Education, which condemnedor “some words that contain insults and slander against a community”as did the Minister of Justice, Bekir Bozdag, who assured that “the use of the language of hatred, hostility and discrimination to pit one part of the public against another is also disrespectful.”
Erdogan himself, whose party with Islamist roots first came to power two decades ago, studied in one of the first Imam Hatip schools in Turkeywhich were founded by the state to educate young people to be imams and preachers, but have since skyrocketed in number.
Reuters and DPA agencies
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A popular pop singer arrested in Turkey for a joke about Islamic schools