Turkey's Prime Minister Orders Heavy Metal Fans Arrested For 'Devil Horns' Salute

July 29, 2009

Nicholas Birch of The Irish Times reports: Five Turkish heavy metal fans got more than they bargained for in Istanbul last weekend when they made heavy metal salutes (the devil horns, the slightly demonic hand gesture with a raised index finger and pinkie that has long been as an essential element as jeans to the hard rock fan's concert accessories) at a passing cavalcade.

"The tinted windows of one of the cars opened and a guy in dark glasses shouted, 'What the hell are you doing?'" says Yusuf Sengul, who was attending the first day of a heavy metal festival with his friends.

Five minutes later, the men in black came back with police, bundled Sengul and four others into cars and took them to a police station.

"They said they were acting on the orders of the prime minister," Sengul remembers. "We were laughing. We thought it was a joke."

But it wasn't. Accused of "disrespect of a senior official," the five youngsters spent the rest of the day and night being taken from one police station to another.

Read the entire report from The Irish Times.

Courtesy of CNN Turkey:

Find more on

Prev More News Next

Comments Disclaimer And Information

BLABBERMOUTH.NET uses the Facebook Comments plugin to let people comment on content on the site using their Facebook account. The comments reside on Facebook servers and are not stored on BLABBERMOUTH.NET. To comment on a BLABBERMOUTH.NET story or review, you must be logged in to an active personal account on Facebook. Once you're logged in, you will be able to comment. User comments or postings do not reflect the viewpoint of BLABBERMOUTH.NET and BLABBERMOUTH.NET does not endorse, or guarantee the accuracy of, any user comment. To report spam or any abusive, obscene, defamatory, racist, homophobic or threatening comments, or anything that may violate any applicable laws, use the "Report to Facebook" and "Mark as spam" links that appear next to the comments themselves. To do so, click the downward arrow on the top-right corner of the Facebook comment (the arrow is invisible until you roll over it) and select the appropriate action. You can also send an e-mail to blabbermouthinbox(@)gmail.com with pertinent details. BLABBERMOUTH.NET reserves the right to "hide" comments that may be considered offensive, illegal or inappropriate and to "ban" users that violate the site's Terms Of Service. Hidden comments will still appear to the user and to the user's Facebook friends. If a new comment is published from a "banned" user or contains a blacklisted word, this comment will automatically have limited visibility (the "banned" user's comments will only be visible to the user and the user's Facebook friends).