A man who tried to set fire to a statue of Turkey’s founder Mustafa Kemal Atatürk and attacked it with an axe was saved by municipal police after a group tried to lynch him in Sakarya’s Democracy Square on Monday.
According to the Doğan news agency, M.F.T. (37) ascended a ladder and tried to hang a Turkish flag on the Atatürk statue in Democracy Square on 11:30 am on Monday while uttering some words in Arabic.
After people in the square warned him, he started hitting the statue with an axe and tried to set fire to it with a can of gasoline.
Meanwhile, the angry crowd tried to stop him from attacking the statue and attempted to lynch him.
The Sakarya police intervened, taking the man into custody and to a nearby police station. The angry crowd pursued the man to the station.
In a statement after the incident, Sakarya Governor Hüseyin Avni Coş said the same person was involved in a similar incident in 2010 and is currently standing trial. Coş also said a medical report indicates he has psychological problems.