Turkish police arrested one of many nation’s most distinguished pop stars, Gulsen Bayraktar Colakoglu (generally recognized by her first title Gulsen), on Thursday for making a joke about Islamic non secular faculties.
On Monday, a Turkish court docket apparently bowed to native and worldwide outrage by transferring her from pretrial detention to deal with arrest.
Gulsen is a singer, dancer, and songwriter typically described as “Turkey’s Madonna.” She has lengthy been controversial amongst Turkey’s highly effective Islamists for her flamboyant performances, revealing outfits, and assist for homosexual rights, which she typically expresses on stage by waving the homosexual pleasure rainbow flag.
Throughout an April live performance in Istanbul, Gulsen made a joke about one among her musicians attending an Islamic non secular college. “He studied at an Imam Hatip. That’s the place his perversion comes from,” she mentioned.
Imam Hatip faculties are secondary academic establishments that train Islamic beliefs to Turkish college students (each “imam” and “hatip” are phrases for Muslim clerics).
The colleges have been in existence for many years, however their funding and significance have been dramatically elevated on the orders of their most prestigious graduate, authoritarian Islamist President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Secular Turkish dad and mom disapproved of Erdogan’s large push to broaden the Islamic faculties, complaining that non secular schooling and political indoctrination have been being prioritized over educational excellence.
Gulsen’s followers in all probability don’t assume extremely of Imam Hatip faculties, however Erdogan and his ruling AKP get together most actually do. AKP politicians condemned the singer, whereas pro-government media gave heavy protection to video of her onstage remarks.
“Scandalous remarks focusing on imam-hatips from Gülşen, who had drawn reactions by flying LGBT flags at her concert events and saying, ‘Those that don’t like this are free to depart,’” howled pro-government newspaper Day by day Sabah, which took the lead in drawing consideration to the months-old video of the singer’s onstage joke final week.
Istanbul prosecutors responded to the sudden media consideration by launching an investigation of Gulsen for “inciting the folks into hatred and animosity.” AKP officers dismissed criticism that her freedom of expression was underneath assault, utilizing exactly the identical “hate speech isn’t free speech” reasoning as woke censors in the US.
“Producing hate isn’t a department of arts. Concentrating on a piece of society with the declare of ‘perversion’ and making an attempt to divide Turkey is a hate crime,” defined AKP spokesman Omer Celik.
Gulsen was arrested at her dwelling in Istanbul on Thursday. She instructed the court docket her onstage feedback have been only a little bit of playful banter between buddies and claimed the band member she was joking with onstage was not really a graduate of Imam Hatip faculties — his nickname is “Imam” and he or she threw in “hatip” in a little bit of free affiliation.
Gulsen posted a public apology for her feedback to Instagram from the courthouse:
A joke I made within the working atmosphere was broadcast by individuals who intention to polarize society. I’m sorry that my phrases gave the ill-intentioned individuals who wish to polarize our nation what they needed. I see that whereas I used to be defending freedom of expression, I used to be pushed to the unconventional that I criticized. I apologize to everybody who was offended due to my assertion within the video. I ought to have discovered one other language.
The court docket rejected her pleas for leniency and ordered her held in pretrial detention, to the outrage of her followers, Turkish opposition leaders, free-speech advocates all over the world, and different Turkish musicians.
Kemal Kilicdaroglu, head of the opposition Republican Folks’s Get together (CHP), accused the AKP authorities of making an attempt to “set our youth towards one another” by prosecuting Gulsen.
Ali Babacan, a former official in Erdogan’s authorities who now runs a distinct opposition get together referred to as Democracy and Progress (DEVA), mentioned Gulsen’s joke was “offensive” however “the response to this shouldn’t be an arrest.”
“The mentality that assaults somebody who apologized with the stick of punishment is neither honest nor merciful,” Babacan mentioned.
“Our authorized system – which turns a blind eye to corruption, thieves, those that break the regulation and bloodbath nature, those that kill animals and those that use faith to polarize society by way of their bigoted concepts – has arrested Gulsen in a single whack,” complained Tarkan, arguably the nation’s most profitable male pop icon, recognized within the West for the Nineties crossover hit in Latin America “Şımarık.”
“I deeply remorse the arrest of the artist Gulsen. She was focused for boldly advocating for girls’s rights, LGBT+ rights, secularism, democracy, and pluralism. This can be a lynching marketing campaign. It’s neither lawful nor conscientious. Free directly,” British-Turkish novelist Elif Shafak mentioned on Twitter.
Gulsen supporters on social media accused AKP of utilizing a flimsy pretext to persecute her for supporting homosexual rights and accused Erdogan of beating up on the pop star to shore up Islamist assist forward of subsequent yr’s elections.
The U.S. State Division issued a tepid assertion after Gulsen’s arrest, declaring itself “involved concerning the types of judicial harassment getting used to restrict freedom of expression in Turkey.”
The BBC reported the Gulsen affair is threatening to blow open a significant fault line in Turkish society, since AKP has currently been conducting extra “interventions into life” and practising extra aggressive censorship. Turkish social media posts characteristic loads of assist for arresting the singer, in addition to condemnation:
Whereas some criticized Gulsen’s remarks, they argued that her arrest was a step too far.
“I’m additionally a [graduate] of a spiritual highschool,” conservative opposition journalist Nihal Bengisu Karaca mentioned. “I used to be additionally harm by Gulsen’s insult. I confirmed my response by writing an article… However why is Gulsen being arrested? What’s the intention right here?”
Nevertheless, others on social media praised the arrest for “setting an excellent instance of what’s going to occur to those that cross the road.”
“Calling somebody from a faculty, a soccer membership or an ethnicity a ‘pervert’ is a hate crime,” columnist Fuat Ugur mentioned.
On Monday, a Turkish court docket ordered Gulsen launched from jail and positioned underneath home arrest till she will be totally prosecuted for her quip. The fees towards her haven’t been dropped.
