A stage joke about the religious Imam Hatip schools is fatal to the Turkish singer Gülsen. She ends up in prison for public incitement to hatred. After protests, her release is getting closer, and her freedom will probably remain restricted in the future.
Turkish singer Gülsen, who was imprisoned for joking about a religious educational institution, is to be released from prison. Instead, an Istanbul court put the pop star under house arrest, the state news agency Anadolu reported. The arrest of the popular singer had not only caused great outrage among artists.
Gülsen Bayraktar Colakoglu, as her full name is, was arrested last Thursday for jokingly telling a colleague at a concert in April that his “perversity” was due to his time at an Imam Hatip school. The Imam Hatip Schools are state educational institutions that focus on religious education. The Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan was a student of such a school. Due to the increasing number of religious schools, critics of the AKP government accuse the Islamization of secular Turkey.
According to media reports, Gülsen is accused of public incitement to hatred. Media close to the government had recently published a video with the statements and sharply criticized the singer. Justice Minister Bekir Bozdag called her statements “a huge injustice,” according to state broadcaster TRT.
Numerous artists, opposition politicians, queer networks and other associations had called for Gülsen’s release and criticized the imprisonment as illegal – including the famous singer Tarkan. Individual members of the ruling party had also condemned the pre-trial detention. Gülsen is known for her public solidarity with LGBTQ and has been criticized for this several times from religious and pro-government circles.
