Bülent Ersoy, the famous transsexual singer of Turkey, has appeared at the hearing of her case in the Bakırköy Courthouse in Istanbul. Ersoy is accused of alienating people from military service through her words during a TV program that if she had a son she would not send him to fight in the Northern Iraq operations.

Ersoy defended her position by saying that she was demanding solution rather than dying to solve the problem  at hand and she also added that she had the right to express her opinions as an artist who was born and raised in Turkey and paid her taxes.

“If it is treason or alienating people from military service to ask for solution rather than death, then that is simply a matter of understanding. I am here because I was misunderstood.”

Ersoy is on trial for talking against deaths in the Northern Iraq operations during the TV program Popstar Alaturka on February 24, which was aired by Star TV.

The prosecutor had filed the lawsuit following complaints by ten people and based his arguments on the claim that every Turk was born a soldier and that Ersoy’s sppech was quoted by the pro-Kurdish Roj TV.

She was met with banners against the war

Ersoy had said in the program that “If I had given birth to a child and someone sitting at a desk had said ‘You will do this, he will do that’, and I would have buried my child, would I accept that?”

The court ended the hearing with the decision to wait for the statements of some of the complaining institutions. The trial will continue on October 30.

Young Civilians were in front of the court house with their banners against the war to show their support for the artist. The trial was watched by reporters from the BBC, the AFP and the ZDF.

“I asked for solution instead of death; there is no crime in this”

Ersoy said, “I simply showed my reaction to a comment of another speaker reagarding the death of our sons. I had no intention of committing crime. There is nothing criminal in what I said anyways.”

Ersoy said her words were twisted by circles with bad intentions. She also said that she could not be blamed if some people had decided to give her name to a neighborhood in Batman in Eastern Turkey. “This would make me proud, but it would not show that I shared their political views. I have spoken on behalf of humanity.”

Ersoy is being tried under article 318 of the Turkish Penal Code. (EÖ/EÜ/TB)