Singer Gulsen Bayraktar Colakoglu, 46, remains in prison awaiting trial
Singer Gulsen Bayraktar Colakoglu, a Turkish pop icon, has been arrested on charges of “inciting hatred” for an alleged joke about a religious school. The facts that are attributed to the artist go back to a concert held in April in which she joked with the group’s keyboardist, nicknamed ‘imán’, telling the public that “her perversion comes from studying at Imán Hatip schools”, a chain of secondary educational institutions with a religious vocation. The 46-year-old artist remains in prison awaiting trial.
The apologies she made public through Twitter, where her account has more than a million and a half followers, have served the singer little. Gulsen wrote that her words on stage were “a joke that I shared with my colleagues, with whom I have worked for many years, that was spread by those who seek to polarize society.” Before her fall the accusations of the leadership of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), whose Minister of Education condemned “some words that contain insults and slander against a community.” Similar words were pronounced by those responsible for Justice and Culture. And the AKP spokesman, Ömer Çelik, was blunt in assuring that “targeting a segment of society with the accusation of ‘perversion’ and trying to polarize Turkey is a hate crime and a shame for humanity.”
“Disproportionate measure”
The defense of the artist came from the opposition Republican Party (CHP), whose leader, Kemal Kilicdaroglu, called for her immediate release and pointed to the Islamists as responsible for “taking a joke to try to pit the country’s youth against each other.” Faced with the accusations, Gulsen’s lawyer argued that it is “a disproportionate measure, my client has not committed any crime.”
The Turkish pop star, author of hits like ‘Lolipop’, which has thirteen million views on YouTube, has already been singled out by conservative sectors due to her support for the LGBTQ community in the country and on the country’s social networks they interpret this arrest as an attempt by Recep Tayyip Erdogan to consolidate the support of the religious voter before the elections scheduled for ten months from now. The president and many members of his party are graduates of religious schools, which were established decades ago with the original goal of educating imams.
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