Instanbul – Turkish authorities arrested a female medical student on Saturday for declining to pay respect to the pro-Israeli first Turkish president on his death anniversary.
21-years-old medical student, Emine Şahin, was arrested for speaking out and declining to maintain one minute silence commemorating the death of pro-Israeli first president of Turkey – Mustafa Kemal Atatürk – who died on 10 November 1938.
She peacefully protested, “Ataturk is not God. There are Allah’s laws and he took laws from the West.”
Atatürk is known as the father of the modern Turkey who exiled the last monarch of the Ottoman Empire – Khalifah Abdulmajid II – and made a public speech brazenly criticizing Islam and Prophet Mohammed.
During his first speech he said, “For nearly five hundred years, these rules and theories of an Arab Shaikh and the interpretations of generations of lazy and good-for-nothing priests have decided the civil and criminal law of Turkey.”
He further said, “Islam – this theology of an immoral Arab – is a dead thing. Possibly it might have suited tribes in the desert. It is no good for modern, progressive state. God’s revelation! There is no God! These are only the chains by which the priests and bad rulers bound the people down.”
He believed that Prophet Mohammed brought Islam to empower Arabs and to form an Arab political movement. Due to his ardent anti-Arab sentiments, he became a pro-Israeli ideologue.
Şahin said in a police statement, “remembering Apostate Atatürk in such a ceremony was against Muslims beliefs, and I did not regret what I said,” T24 reported.
Disrespecting Atatürk is deemed as a serious offence in Turkish constitution by the article 5816.
However, President of Turkey Tayyib Erdoğan promised to ‘protect the legacy’ of Atatürk during the anniversary.
“We consider it a duty to give Atatürk due credit as the commander-in-chief of our Independence War and the founder of our Republic, in front of our nation. Our nation’s respect for Atatürk is eternal,” Erdoğan said.
“There is nothing more natural than respect for a name who was leader of such a struggle to have a valuable place in the nation’s hearts,” he added.
