“I cannot wait until midnight. Should we just release the song right away?” tweeted Mabel Matiz, the up and coming young star of the Turkish pop scene, on June 30, the last day of Pride month. Within minutes, he released the video for “Copshop,” a melodic reflection on a gay man tortured in a police station. Mere hours later, the hit became a trending topic on Twitter, with dueling hashtags: #copshop among supporters and #MabelMatizKnowYourPlace among those who attacked the video for what they called its obscene content. Within a day, Turkey’s media watchdog the Radio and Television Supreme Council (RTUK) warned TV stations not to air the video, which touches on two taboo subjects on its list: homosexuality and torture in police stations.
“They grilled me, but I did not reveal your name / They carved in my heart the grave of love,” go the lyrics. Matiz, a gaunt-faced man with haunted eyes, sings longingly to a dark, brooding man amid neo-Ottoman decor. There are neither explicit love scenes nor nudity; only the use of symbolism such as flower petals hints that they are lovers. “A scandalous video with shameless innuendos,” read the headline of notoriously homophobic daily Yeni Akit. It claimed that Matiz, like Disney and Marvel, aimed to “normalize homosexuality.”
“The Radio and Television Supreme Council is calling television and media stations one by one to tell them not to air the video,” Ilhan Tasci, a member of the RTUK from the opposition Republican People’s Party, tweeted. The manager of a popular music channel confirmed that the channel was “cordially asked” not to air it, but the council had not made a formal written request. “I guess they do not want to create the controversy they faced when they banned a video by Sezen Aksu for blasphemy last January,” she told Al-Monitor on condition of anonymity. The famous singer had come under attack by the president for what conservatives called a disrespectful reference to Adam and Eve. Still, when the public sided with the pop music diva, the president and RTUK backpedaled.
Wisened government officials — including Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu, who repeatedly attacks the LGBTQ community and says homosexuality does not belong in Turkish culture — made no remarks on the video.
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