Istanbul, Turkey
The President of Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, this Monday asked the youth of his country to reject homosexuality, amid controversy over the arrest of four students accused of insulting Islam with LGBT symbols at Bogazici University in Istanbul.
“Our youth is not LGBT youth,” Erdogan exclaimed during a virtual meeting with his party’s youth wing. Islamist justice and development (AKP), which has ruled Turkey since 2002.
“You are a young person with computers and keyboards, you are not LGBT. You are not a young person who spreads the plague; on the contrary, you are a young person who stirs up broken or fallen hearts; I trust you,” added the president.
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Comments from Erdogan a controversy that arose last week when police arrested five students from Bogaziçi University in Istanbul and charged them with insulting Islam for placing a picture of the Caaba on the ground during an art show in the gardens of the institution.
The controversial work depicted the sacred complex of Mecca, depicting a popular creature from the anatolian mythology, half woman and half snake, in the place of the Caaba, and a rainbow flag in one corner.
Turkish Interior Minister Süleyman Soylu announced the arrests on Saturday, labeling the students as “LGBT perverts”, and on the same day two were remanded in custody on charges of “inciting hatred”, while two others in in custody. house arrestreports the newspaper Diken.
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Homosexuality is legal in Turkey since 1858, but rejected by much of society, although there is a vibrant gay community in Istanbul, Ankara and other cities and annual pride marches were held until they were banned in 2015.
Politician Devlet Bahçeli, head of the ultra-nationalist party MHP, who is a coalition partner of the AKP in parliament, today denounced in a speech that the Turkish intelligentsia has not been bothered by the image of the Kaaba and compared the exhibition of the works together. with the armed Islamic uprising in Mecca in 1979, which left more than 300 dead.