A Turkish court on Sunday jails Safiye İnci, an Islamist woman who was detained by police after she filmed herself insulting Turkey’s founding father, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, at his mausoleum.
“Work is continuing to apprehend [Safiye İnci],” a statement by the head prosecutor’s office in Ankara was quoted as saying by the pro-government Karar daily before her detention by police.
“I am very embarrassed for having come here. I came because they really insisted. I don’t like Atatürk a bit. Atatürk didn’t found Turkey, either. You know, there are Atatürkists who don’t like Tayyip [Erdoğan]… Atatürk could not even be Tayyip’s shit,” İnci said at Atatürk’s mausoleum in a video shared on social media.
In response, social media users started a Twitter hashtag calling for İnci to be jailed.
The pro-government Takvim daily denounced İnci as an “actor,” saying she was an opposition-supporting provocateur who had donned a headscarf in order to make Erdoğan supporters appear to be anti-Atatürk. It also quoted social media posts saying that she was a member of the Gülen movement.
İnci later issued a second video apologising and saying that she had only said those things in response to a friend who had no respect for her own views.
The Interior Ministry announced that 514 social media accounts have been investigated while legal action was taken against 313 social media users due to their posts, Gazete Duvar reported last week. (SCF with Ahval)
