JINHA

NEWS CENTER – Doctors plan to wake up Mutlu Kaya, the 19-year-old singer who was shot in the head in her Diyarbakır province home, from anesthesia today.

Mutlu Kaya, 19, was in her home in the town of Ergani, in the largely Kurdish province of Diyarbakır, when an armed attacker entered her home at around 3 a.m. earlier this week and shot her in the head. Mutlu was rushed to hospital in the city center of Diyarbakır. Mutlu had become famous as a competitor in the television singing contest "Beautiful Voice" ("Sesi Çok Güzel"). Women's groups across the country are denouncing the attempted femicide, as the uncertainty about Mutlu's fate continues.

"In these cases, we put the patient to sleep for 72 hours," said Dr. Hikmet İyem, who is overseeing Mutlu's care at a hospital in Diyarbakır. "We have not made any efforts to remove the bullet yet. The only important thing for this is that Mutlu begins to wake up as the medicine wears off."

The identity of Mutlu's attacker has been a subject of hot debate in the Turkish media, where singers of Kurdish origin like Mutlu are often portrayed as exotic and tragic figures. Some reports have claimed that Mutlu's conservative relatives (in some reports, even her father) threatened her if she competed in the competition and that they planned an "honor killing" as punishment for disobeying them. Her mother, Hanım Kaya, expressed anger at the claims, which she said were sensational and based on the family's Kurdish origin.

Hanım has said her first thought was that the attacker was a debt collector, as the family has gone into extreme debt—to the degree that they had to pull Mutlu out of the musical conservatory she was admitted to because they could no longer finance her education. Police records show that Mutlu had reported to the police that a man was repeatedly harassing her, but police never conducted any investigation into her complaint. So far, the Diyarbakır governor's office has announced that they have detained Mutlu's boyfriend, 26, in connection with the attack.

Statements of condemnation and concern about the armed attack have rained in from across Turkey, including from the singer Sibel Can, who has called Mutlu her "heir apparent." The platform "We Will Stop Women Homicides" issued a statement of concern for Mutlu and all other women who are attacked. Selahattin Demirtaş, head of the left Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP)—which has promised to take action against the wave of femicide in Turkey—also called the family to express his concern.

(be-ae/gc/mg/cm)