“No one should raise his tongue against Adam; if anyone does, our duty is to cut out his tongue“. With these words was pronounced on Friday Recep Tayyip Erdogan about a song by the singer Sezen Aksu, icon of pop music in Turkey.
Although the Turkish president, who made these remarks from a mosque in Istanbul, did not directly name the artist 67 years old, thus referred, in a veiled way, to the protests launched by the Islamist press against some verses of the composer in a love song: “We go from bad to worse, straight towards the apocalypse, thanks to those ignorant Adam and Eve“.
This Monday, more than 200 Turkish writers and artists have responded by a manifesto stating that “Sezen Aksu is not alone”. The document is signed by personalities such as the writers Buket Uzuner, Ece Temelkuran or Elif Shafak, while the Nobel Prize winner Orhan Pamuk has expressed himself in the same sense.
“We are all proud of the great artist Sezen Aksu. I stand with her. Millions are with her today. We will not be a state or a nation that crushes artists. Sezen Aksu is our honor,” Pamuk said in a message published by the Turkish digital ‘T24’.
Although the song in question was published in 2017, it has become the subject of controversy and lynching on social networks these days, when several Islamist newspapers have accused the artist of “blasphemy”, that accumulates 40 million records sold and dozens of awards.
On Saturday, Aksu herself responded through social networks thanking the support received and posting a new song written the day before. “You can’t crush my tongue“, reads the text, which adds: “You can not kill me / I have the voice, the instrument, the word / When I say I, I am the whole world”.
Just this weekend was Turkish journalist Sedef Kabas arrested for what the authorities consider an “insult” against Erdogan, after the informant used this saying during a talk show on television: “When the ox enters the palace, it does not become a king, but the palace becomes a stable” .
Mario Twitchell is an accomplished author and journalist, known for his insightful and thought-provoking writing on a wide range of topics including general and opinion. He currently works as a writer at 247 news agency, where he has established himself as a respected voice in the industry.
