A teenage Turkish woman competing in a televised singing contest similar to The Voice is in critical condition after being shot in the head Monday.
The Daily Mail reports Mutlu Kaya, 19, previously received death threats for her decision to join Turkey’s Sesi Çok Güzel competition on the country’s private channel Fox.
According to the site, the young woman once told producers, “When they heard that I was going to join the competition, they told me they would kill me. I am afraid.”
Her fears were validated Monday as she rehearsed inside her home in the Ergani district of Diyarbakir province, when an attacker broke into her backyard and shot her through a back window from the residence’s garden, striking her in the head.
The state Anatolia news agency said Tuesday a suspect in the shooting had not been named, but the New York Daily News reports one of four people who have been arrested in connection with the attack is the woman’s former-boyfriend.
The country’s Posta newspaper reported prior to the attack that Kaya had been threatened by someone within her own family for going to Istanbul to take part in the show.
She had reportedly been mentored by Turkish female folk legend Sibel Can.
Mutlu’s father, a man named Mehmet Kaya, told reporters outside her hospital: “I just want my daughter to be healthy and don’t want anything else… I am expecting help from Sibel Can, she is like a mother to Mutlu.”
Per the Daily News, women in the Ergani district are expected to conform to traditional roles, and the attack comes during a time when violence against women is already a source of anger in the Turkey.
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