The popular song Bella Ciao blared from mosques in Turkey, and a Turkish prosecutor on Thursday launched a probe into the alleged hijacking of the mosques’ speaker systems, Al Arabiya reported.
The tune, a World War II-era Italian anti-fascist anthem, has been adopted by leftists around the world but it has no particular association with religion and it was unclear why anyone would seek to broadcast it from mosques.
The government and religious officials reacted angrily to the breaking of a religious taboo — mosques are supposed to only broadcast calls to prayer or other significant religious messages — accusing unnamed individuals of “sabotage.”
While the national religious body Diyanet filed a legal complaint and launched an internal inquiry, the Izmir prosecutor’s office said it would investigate the original incident as well as social media users who posted about it, news agency said.
Izmir is one of Turkey’s secular bastions, where the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) dominates local politics.
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) and its allies roundly criticised the stunt.
“Whoever committed this ugly act will surely be found,” tweeted AKP spokesman Omer Celik.
Pro-government Sabah daily described it as a “scandal” and the Yeni Safak newspaper said it was a “vile attack” on mosques.
Whereas, an unidentified woman was taken into custody, the official Anadolu news agency reported, without providing further details.
It’s not the first time such an incident has occurred in Turkey. Earlier in 2017, loudspeakers broadcast audio from a porn movie in a city in northern Turkey.
People in Kuzeykent, a suburb of the northern city of Kastamonu, were woken at late night by the soundtrack from a pornographic film being played at high volume from the mosque loudspeakers.