Istanbul
CNN
—
Turkish pop star Gulsen Colakoglu has been jailed on prices of “inciting or insulting the public to hatred and enmity” after she made a joke about religious schools in Turkey, based on the state-run Anadolu information company.
The prices look like associated to a video circulating on social media from a Gulsen live performance in April, when she joked about one of many musicians.
He “graduated from Imam Hatip (religious schools). That’s where his pervert side comes from,” she stated.
Several Twitter customers could possibly be seen sharing the video on Thursday with a hashtag calling for her arrest and saying it’s offensive to affiliate the schools with perverts.
Gulsen denies that she has dedicated any crime and is interesting the arrest, based on her lawyer Emek Emre.
After her detention, Gulsen shared a message on her official Twitter and Instagram accounts, apologizing to “anyone who was offended” by the joke and saying it had been twisted by “malicious people who aim to polarize our country.”
“I made a joke with my colleagues, with whom I have worked for many years in the business. It has been published by people who aim to polarize society,” she stated.
“In defending the freedom I believe in, I see myself thrown towards the radical end that I criticize. I apologize to anyone who was offended by my speech in the video,” she stated.
She later stated in a testimony that it was an “unfortunate joke” and requested to be launched, saying she had a baby relying on her and that she would come to court docket or a police station when wanted, based on Anadolu.
Gulsen has beforehand been focused by Turkish conservative teams for her revealing stage outfits and assist for the LGBTQ group.
The Muslim majority nation is formally secular however extremely polarized over points surrounding secularism, faith, ladies’s rights and LGBTQ rights.
Imam Hatip schools, which train religious research alongside the Turkish curriculum, have grown in the twenty years that the conservative Justice and Development Party (AKP) has been in energy. The schools are identified for coaching younger individuals to change into imams or preachers. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan attended the college, as did many AKP celebration members.
Reactions to the arrest have come from unusual Turks, celebrities, and even political events.
After her arrest, social media posts confirmed Gulsen followers in a packed soccer stadium singing her songs in solidarity.
The award-winning British-Turkish novelist Elif Shafak referred to as for Gulsen’s launch, as did different cultural figures.
“I deeply regret the arrest of the artist @gulsen. She was targeted for boldly advocating for women’s rights, LGBT+ rights, secularism, democracy, and pluralism. This is a lynching campaign. It is neither lawful nor conscientious. Free at once. #gulsenserbestbırakılsın,” she tweeted.
Iconic Turkish pop star Tarkan additionally took to Twitter on Friday, writing that “this injustice to Gulsen must end and Gulsen must be released immediately.”
“Those who prosecute the ones without arrest and sometimes even release them without trial who sexually abuse children, murder women, rape women, but when it comes to Gulsen, they take action quickly. Our legal system, which ignores those who are corrupt, steal, violate the law, slaughter nature, kill animals, use religion as a tool for their own bigotry ideas and polarize society, arrests Gulsen at one whack,” he additionally wrote.
Members of the AKP defended the arrest, with AKP spokesperson Omer Celik saying “inciting hatred is not an art form” in a Twitter post.
Turkish Minister of Treasury and Finance Dr. Nurettin Nebati tweeted, “Our Imam Hatip High Schools are our distinguished institutions that raise generations equipped with our national and moral values and have moral maturity. I strongly condemn this distorted language and the distorted mentality behind it, which targets our youth studying at our Imam Hatip Schools, and I find it unacceptable.”
Meanwhile, the chief of Turkey’s fundamental opposition celebration described the backlash in opposition to Gulsen as a manufactured controversy meant to “set our young people against each other.”
“The winds of peace have been blowing for a long time among young people with different lifestyles. The goal (of the arrest) is to take a joke that has exceeded its purpose and set our young people against each other. It is to stay more in power, and more to steal and snap,” Kemal Kilicdaroglu wrote on Twitter.
The presidential and parliamentary elections in Turkey are each scheduled to occur early subsequent summer season.
