JUST WHEN YOU thought 2017 couldn’t get any weirder…
Yesterday, actress Lindsay Lohan met with Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, the President of Turkey, and Emine Erdoğan, the First Lady of Turkey. She also met Bana Alabed, a seven-year-old Syrian girl who rose to prominence for sending dispatches from war-torn Syria through her Twitter acount.
During her visit, Lindsay Lohan presented the President and his wife with badges reading, “World is Bigger Than 5″ and participated in a Periscope with young Bana.
“What a dream it is for Mr. President Erdogan and The First Lady to invite me to their home,” Lohan wrote. “Their efforts in helping Syrian Refugees is truly inspiring.”
Needless to say, it was all very confusing.
So why exactly is the star of The Parent Trap being invited to the homes of world leaders now?
Last year, Lindsay Lohan started devoting herself to working with Syrian refugees. In October, she visited a Syrian refugee camp in Turkey and partnered with a German energy drinks manufacturer to donate proceeds from the sales of a blue caffeine lemonade called Mintanine to refugees.
During her visit to Turkey, she began repeating one of President Erdogan’s favourite mantras, “The world is bigger than five,” and gave several interviews.
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This refers to the UN Security Council, which is comprised of five permanent members — China, Russia, France, the United Kingdom and the United States of America.
Turkey has been critical of the UN Security Council for its failure to deal with Syrian conflict and has called for it to be more representative.
“For this reason, on every occasion, I remind the international community about the reality that ‘the world is bigger than five’,” he said, calling for the membership of the Council to be made more representative.
Shortly thereafter, Lindsay Lohan debuted a bizarre new accent at the opening of her nightclub in Athens.
Once again, Lohan uttered the phrase, “The world is bigger than five,” prompting people to wonder if there was something shady afoot.
In late November, she retweeted this tweet from President Erdogan.
And invited President Erdogan and President Putin to join her in selling cars to help raise funds for Syrian refugees.
A few weeks ago, Lohan sparked rumours that she had converted to Islam after she wiped her Instagram and changed her bio to an Arabic greeting. (A pal later told Page Six that she was simply “educating herself” on the religion.)
And now she’s hanging out with President Erdogan.
For what it’s worth, international human rights groups have raised concerns about the Turkish regime following last year’s attempted coup.
Earlier this week, Amnesty International released a statement urging UK Prime Minister Theresa May to ask “probing questions” about the country’s human rights crackdown ahead of her visit to the country’s capital.
“Human rights abuses during the attempted coup absolutely must be investigated and their perpetrators brought to justice, but this can’t be done at the expense of fundamental rights,” they said.
We’ve gathered disturbing evidence of widespread torture in the immediate aftermath of the would-be coup, and the rights of detainees have also been severely curtailed in a series of executive decrees. More than 40,000 people have been remanded in pre-trial detention since the coup attempt, and more than 90,000 civil servants have been summarily suspended or dismissed from their jobs.
More than 100 journalists and media workers have been imprisoned – some for months – in punitive lengthy pre-trial detention, and hundreds of media outlets have been shut down as part of a massive crackdown on freedom of expression.
Oh Lindsay.
