Turkish imam loses his job over lyrics criticizing government
Demotion of an imam over a protest song comes as another sign of the expanding intolerant climate in Turkey ahead of June elections.
Turkey’s official religious body demoted an imam over a protest song he wrote and sang, in a move critics say is another indication of the government’s increasingly blatant intolerance of any sort of criticism ahead of parliamentary and presidential elections.
“They see there is bribing — still they don't say anything. There is no justice, no morals; they are keeping their silence,” Imam Fatih Ardic, who has worked in Turkey’s western province of Manisa, wrote in his song without knowing these lyrics would cost him his job.
