After his arrest, Gulsen shared a message on his official Twitter and Instagram accounts, apologizing to “anyone who was offended” by the joke and saying it was twisted by “evil people who purpose to polarize our nation.”

“I made a joke with my colleagues, with whom I’ve labored for just a few years in enterprise. It has been printed by people who purpose to polarize society,” he acknowledged.

“In defending freedom I think about, I see myself thrown in path of the highest of the unconventional that I criticize. I apologize to anyone who was offended by my phrases throughout the video,” he acknowledged.

He later acknowledged in his testimony that it was an “unfortunate joke” and requested to be launched, saying that he had a toddler relying on him and that he would come to courtroom or the police station when needed, in accordance with Anadolu.

Gulsen has beforehand been centered by Turkish conservative groups for his stage outfits exhibiting help for the LGBTQ neighborhood.

The Muslim-majority nation is formally secular nevertheless extraordinarily polarized on factors surrounding secularism, religion, ladies’s rights and LGBTQ rights.

Imam Hatip’s school, which teaches religious analysis and the Turkish curriculum, has grown throughout the twenty years given that conservative Justice and Enchancment Get collectively (AKP) received right here to vitality. The varsity is known for teaching youthful people to turn into clergymen or preachers. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan attended the varsity, as did many members of the AKP social gathering.

Controversy in Turkey

Reactions to the arrest received right here from peculiar Turks, celebrities, and even political occasions.

After his arrest, social media posts confirmed Gulsen’s followers in a packed soccer stadium singing his songs in solidarity.

Award-winning British-Turkish novelist Elif Shafak known as for Gulsen’s launch, along with completely different cultural figures.

Iconic Turkish pop star Tarkan moreover took to Twitter on Friday, writing that “this injustice Gulsen ought to end and Gulsen ought to be launched immediately.”

“People who prosecute additional with out arrest and usually even launch them with no trial who sexually abuse kids, murder of women, rape of women, nevertheless with reference to Gulsen, they take movement quickly. , breaking the laws, killing nature, killing animals, using religion as a software program for his private bigotry ideas and polarize society, arrests Gulsen in a single whack,” he moreover wrote.

The Minister of Treasury and Finance of Turkey Dr. Nurettin Nebati tweeted, “Our Imam Hatip Extreme School is a distinguished institution that raises a expertise equipped with our nationwide and moral values ​​and has moral maturity. which targets our youth to evaluate in our Imam Hatip School, and I uncover it unacceptable.”

Within the meantime, the chief of Turkey’s main opposition social gathering described the backlash in opposition to Gulsen as a problem created to “set our youthful people in opposition to 1 one other”.

“The wind of peace has been blowing for a really very long time amongst youthful people with utterly completely different life. The purpose (of the arrest) is to take a joke that has exceeded its perform and set our youth in opposition to 1 one other. That’s nonetheless additional. in vitality, and there are plenty of additional who steal and jerk ,” Kemal Kilicdaroglu wrote on Twitter.

Presidential and parliamentary elections in Turkey are every scheduled to occur early subsequent summer season season.