“Yoongi, Can You Hear Me?”: Demanding Justice for #Melisa and ARMY Activism in Turkey

Abstract

Alptekin Keskin and Mutlu Binark’s chapter, “‘Yoongi, Can You Hear Me?’: Demanding Justice for #Melisa and ARMY Activism in Turkey,” delves into how Turkish media attempted to deflect critiques of intimate violence by laying blame on the corrupting influence of K-Pop for the suicide of a young BTS fan. On September 4, 2020, a 15-year-old teenager and K-Pop fan—Melisa–living in a district of ?zmir, completed suicide due to the intimate violence she experienced from her father. On her Twitter account, Melisa expressed that K-Pop, and especially BTS and SUGA, had played a special role to help her cope with that violence in her last two years. In this chapter, Keskin and Binark examine how Turkish ARMY subsequently navigated the shoals of social media and moral panics to seek justice for her death.