Some people think Lindsay Lohan's bizarre new accent could be tied to the Turkish government
The INSIDER Summary:
Lindsay Lohan has a weird new accent.
She's voiced support for Turkey's increasingly authoritarian president.
Some people now wonder if the accent could be tied to her political leanings.
Lindsay Lohan's strange new "pan-European" accent and visits to Turkey have put her in the middle of a geopolitical firestorm.
For a few weeks, Lohan has been talking as if she's lived in Europe her whole life.
"I've been learning different languages since I was a child," Lohan told The Daily Mail. "I'm fluent in English and French can understand Russian and am learning Turkish, Italian, and Arabic."
Here's the accent in action, in an interview where she talks about partying and her visit to Syrian refugees in Turkey.
The strange interview has some people wondering whether Lohan has ties to the Turkish government. It's a stretch, but here's the evidence some Turkey-watchers in geopolitical and security communities have picked up on:
- Lohan dropped an odd line, "the world is bigger than five." It's a favorite phrase of increasingly authoritarian Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and refers to the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council - the United States, United Kingdom, France, China, and Russia - who can veto major UN actions
- "The world is bigger than five" is also a hashtag Lohan used when she visited Syrian refugees in Turkey - another tie to Erdogan and the current Turkish government.
- This isn't the first time Lohan has hinted at her pro-Erdogan sentiments. Earlier this year, she gave an interview to the Daily Sabah, an English-language daily newspaper in Turkey that supports Erdogan's Justice and Development Party (also known as the AKP), where she said the five-country National Security Council system was flawed and needed to be revised.
So what could this have to do with her weird accent?
One theory is the accent could be a ploy to get media attention. Lohan is fascinating to listen to - I've listened to that interview embedded above about a dozen times since first seeing it the other day. And every time I hear it, I also hear Erdogan's phrase, recycled in Lohan's voice.
Some users on Twitter even think the Turkish government could be paying Lohan off to spread Erdogan's message.
"These bullies might have even given her money to have her say 'the world is bigger than five,'" said one Turkish Twitter user, as translated by BuzzFeed News.
"Why did they take Lindsay Lohan out of rehab and let her loose on us?" said another, as translated by BuzzFeed News. "Who did this and why did they do it? This must be part of a plan to make us all go crazy; as if we had a dearth of maniacs, now we have Lindsay Lohan on top them all."
Whatever Lohan's political leanings, we're mainly just curious how long she'll keep the "Lilohan" accent.