“You deceive shopkeepers saying they are policemen and powerful as lions. Here, they ran into a boxer. Couldn’t they find a little Korean?” Turkish singer Atilla Taş asked, referring to the Korean tourists who were attacked by a group of nationalists. The nationalists were protesting the Chinese treatment of Uighurs and confused the Korean tourists for Chinese.
Taş’s remark was also a veiled criticism to President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who had bestowed “a volunteer mission” on tradesmen throughout Turkey to act as law enforcement officers and judges if necessary.