Retired muezzin Mehmet Kuzgun, who was beaten for reciting the sela on the night of the Fetullah Terrorist Organization (FETO) coup attempt, said, "We thought they came to the mosque to take shelter, but they attacked us with stones."
Retired muezzin Mehmet Kuzgun, who was beaten by 3 people after reciting the sela at the Kutlu Yalvaç Mosque in the July 15 coup attempt in Izmir's Narlıdere district and later received the State Pride Medal and veteran's certificate, talked about what happened that night. Stating that 3 people came to the mosque while the sela was reciting, Kuzgun said, "May God Almighty never give such a coup to our Turkey again. While we were reciting the sela, 3 people came to the mosque. We thought that they came to the mosque to take shelter due to the coup. They said to me, 'Why are you reciting the sala?' They were three people, 2 women and one man. In order to prevent a coup in our country, the salas have been recited since the Ottoman period, the people were invited to the streets, to prevent our country from losing our hands." "We said that we were reciting the sala. We could have become martyrs, too, but God did not give us the chance," he said.
Stating that people who he thought came to the mosque to take shelter attacked him with a paving stone, Kuzgun said, "The male one said to us, 'Why are you reciting the sala?' He said, 'You cannot recite this sala, this coup will happen today.' He said words that I cannot say now. The male one then hit me in my abdominal cavity. The female one hit me with a paving stone. They attacked our mosque, the house of God, and broke its windows. I think they did not receive the punishment they deserved. They were released after being sentenced for 2 months. "They are walking around freely as if no coup had ever happened," he said.
Stating that he had previously been slapped by a police officer during the 1980s revolution, Kuzgun said, "Once, during the 1980s revolution, while we were hiding the Quran, a police officer asked, 'In what year was Atatürk born and in what year did he die? Of course, we had to know that Gazi Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the founder of our country, was born in 1881 and died in 1938, but we were children too." He slapped me because I couldn't remember at that moment in his childhood excitement. At that time, I asked him, "In which year was our Prophet (peace be upon him) born and in which year did he die?" He also apologized to me. "We had such a memory in the past." - MANISA