Woman who spoke against ISIL in public in Turkey taken into custody
Interior Ministry of Turkey posted a message on its official Twitter account yesterday evening (January 1) sharing a short video of a group of young adults talking in a cafe at Okmeydanı town of İstanbul.
Speaking in front of the people at the cafe, a young man who is a member of a civil society institution (Halkevleri) talks about the latest deadly attack at Reina nightclub and warns against the ‘danger of bigotry and ISIL in Turkey and emphasizes the importance of secularism’.
Sharing this video footage, the Interior Ministry said in its tweet: ‘This (video) has been forwarded to Counter Terrorism Units. Please, report them if you see these people (seen in the video).’
Receiving reactions from social media users, the Ministry deleted its tweet an hour and a half later.
It’s been reported that Ayşegül Başar, one of the people in the group shown in the video, has been taken into custody this morning from her house. A member of Halkevleri organization and a former intern at Turkey’s shut-down democratic newspaper Cumhuriyet, Başar was targetted by someone on social media after the message of the Interior Ministry.
CHP MP Barış Yarkadaş shared a message from Twitter stating ‘Başar is to be kept in custody for at least 5 days’ and added: “Taking into custody Ayşegül Başar, who is a member of Halkevleri and a team member of Cumhuriyet newspaper, is an act of threateningn those who try to protect secularism.”
MP Yarkadaş also questioned ‘why the Interior Ministry got bothered by young people doing propaganda against ISIL’ and ‘why the ruling party AKP and its supporting media sources get offended when ISIL is condemned’.
Yarkadaş added: “What crime has Ayşegül Başar committed? What are they going to ask her?”
