LETTER FROM ISTANBUL
Every day has its twist. On June 10, in the protective shade of trees in a park in the city of Diyarbakir, in southeastern Turkey, a dance troupe was attacked by around fifty men shouting ” Allahu Akbar ! » (” God is big “). The municipality promptly denounced an action by the jihadist group Hizbullah, whose political showcase, Hüda-Par, an ultraconservative Kurdish Islamist party, is one of the supporters of the government coalition in power in Ankara. A complaint has been filed.
A few hours later, in Konya, in the heart of Anatolia, in the catering area of a shopping center, a group of demonstrators who had come to protest against the war waged by Israel in Gaza violently attacked customers who were waiting in line in front of a Burger King. In an indescribable mess, chairs and tables were stolen and several people were injured.
The next day, in Gebze, a distant suburb of Istanbul, several high school students from the Alaettin Kurt establishment were refused access to a graduation ceremony by members of the administration because of their inappropriate clothing. “inappropriate”. A new rule stipulated that students could not wear, during this event, “clothing such as shorts, tights, above-the-knee skirts, short pants, sleeveless shirts, and t-shirts that show their body lines”.
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Law enforcement officers were dispatched to the scene, intervening against the very upset parents of students. Only the intervention of the district’s academic rector made it possible to resolve the situation and allow the girls to enter. Faced with the scale of this affair on social networks, the Minister of National Education, Yusuf Tekin, who had initially defended the management of the establishment, declared that his services would “conduct an investigation and necessary procedures “.
“Educational model of the Turkish century”
Journalist Nevsin Mengu, a former television presenter and bitter critic of those in power, compared these three events to “a daily celebration of sharia”. Since the severe electoral setback suffered in the last municipal elections in March 2024 by the Justice and Development Party (AKP), the formation of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, in power since 2002, a clear sign of uncertainty has appeared within the Islamo-nationalist government coalition.
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