The authorities deemed this outburst an act of terrorist propaganda and an insult to the head of state, culminating in a potential jail term for Bulur of 22 years.
"I didn’t plan anything, my words were a cry of pain," Bulur told Sputnik. "How would you feel if a live and healthy relative of yours whom you personally sent off to the army returned to you as a corpse?"
Ten days after the funeral the police began interrogating Bulur without even giving him a chance to mourn his brother in peace.
"First they accused me insulting the president, then of spreading terrorist propaganda. It happened after I posted on my Facebook page a letter of condolences released by the mayor’s office following an explosion in a neighboring village which claimed the lives of two young men. Because of this I was accused of supporting terrorists and the PKK," Bulur said. "I’m not a member of any political party, I’ve never had any problems with the law before, but now I’m facing a prison sentence just because I’ve said that brother is pitted against brother."
He also ruefully remarked that due to him and his late brother having different surnames – which is in fact a result of certain local cultural traditions dating back to the old practices of blood feud — some media outlets accused him of being a professional provocateur spreading dissent while others portrayed him as a terrorist or a Daesh militant.
"Provocateurs usually stage a provocation and flee. If I was a PKK member, I would’ve fled to the mountains; if I was a Daesh militant, I would’ve joined their ranks in Syria, Iraq or Libya. But I’m just an ordinary man who’s being demonized," he concluded.
