On the night of July 10, Yıldız Tilbe, who has been making folk-influenced hit pop albums since the 1990s, appeared to praise Hitler in the tweets and say the end of the Jews was near.
“If God allows, it will be again Muslims who will bring the end of those Jews, it is near, near,” she tweeted on her official account @YildizzTilbee.
“They (Jews) are hostile to Allah and all prophets including their own prophet Moses.”
In another tweet she appeared to praise Hitler for the mass extermination of Jews in the Holocaust, writing “May God bless Hitler.”
Tilbe wrote after the criticism that she was not racist.
“There is oppression against Muslims everywhere in the world. Is there any single American or Jew being massacred, whose country is bombed or whose people are killed?”
While Tilbe is yet to issue an apology, she has received support from the mayor of Turkey’s capital city, Ankara, Melih Gökçek.
Gökçek, a senior member of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), backed the singer’s Gaza tweets, retweeting most of her comments except the one on Hitler, calling them “full of intelligence.”
“I applaud you Yıldız Tilbe for the messages you deliver to many of your colleagues and especially to the Turkish nation,” he wrote.
Things have been crazy busy as you can imagine (and I am busy at work as well.)
I just got my 7500th Twitter follower and blog traffic is up around 70% this week as people look for news they don't see elsewhere. Ian continues to do stellar work in his linkdumps.
I had a few very popular posts this week. It already seems a long time ago that I wrote my open condemnation for the murder of Mohammed Abu Khdeir. Over 120 bloggers and pundits signed on.
Other important and popular posts were the What Reporters Need to Know story and the Fatah shooting rockets story. Not to mention the evergreen Amnesty hypocrisy story.
I wish I had more time because there are a lot of newsworthy angles to research and report on, even far away from Israel.
I also want to thank the people who decided (without prompting) to donate to EoZ this week. I really appreciate it!