In her latest foray into world politics, Lindsay Lohan said Tuesday that she was “racially profiled” for wearing a headscarf at London’s Heathrow Airport. Appearing on Good Morning Britain on Tuesday, she told Piers Morgan that when airport security opened her passport and recognized her name, they “immediately started apologizing,” but still told her to take off her headscarf. She reflected on the experience during the television interview. “How would another woman who doesn’t feel comfortable taking off her headscarf feel?” When asked why she was wearing the headscarf, she said, “out of respect to certain countries that I go to, I feel more comfortable acting the same as the other women. That’s just a personal respect issue for me.”
This incident fueled speculation about Lohan’s conversion to Islam, something she has been hinting at for the past couple of years. It started when she was photographed with the Koran in May 2015 after her first day of community service for a 2012 car crash. As of April 2016, she had not yet finished reading it. She also speaks Arabic, maybe.
Lohan’s headscarf incident happened after she flew to London from Turkey in January, where for some reason she met with President Tayyip Erdogan to discuss Syrian refugees. A picture of her and Erdogan is one of the 10 posts that remains on her Instagram, with the caption “What a dream it is for Mr. President Erdogan and The First Lady to invite me to their home. Their efforts in helping Syrian Refugees is truly inspiring.” Lohan’s meeting with Erdogan, strange as it may be, came after she praised him for months across different platforms. In a bizarre interview on Turkish television in October, Lohan said, “Erdogan did really well” handling last summer’s coup, and that it inspired her to help Syrian refugees. In a now-deleted tweet from October 2015, she announced her support for Erdogan’s AKP party, which has a history of cracking down on protesters and opposition media, in the Turkish elections.
No matter. Lindsay Lohan loves to insert herself into politics in strange ways. She commented on Brazil’s election in 2014, endorsing presidential candidate Aecio Neves in a tweet, saying that “his platform brings positive changes in Brasil.” Her publicist later rescinded this endorsement, saying that the tweet was posted in error. She live-tweeted Brexit. (She supported remain.) She posted an Instagram mourning the death of Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah. She supported Obama in the 2008 election and Romney in the 2012 election, perhaps because the Obama campaign declined her offer for a public endorsement in 2008, although in 2016, she moved back to the Democratic party.
The tweet was posted in error.
Her dive into Turkish affairs, however, seems to be her most passionate foray so far. Even before her meeting with Erdogan, some people accused her of being a paid mouthpiece for his regime. They cited her new tendency for repeating Erdogan’s catchphrase “the world is bigger than five,” which refers to increasing the number of countries on the United Nations Security Council, in interviews and now-deleted Instagram posts. Is Lindsay Lohan a Turkish psyop? I sure hope so.
