EUROPE

U.S. Ambassador to Turkey Says, ‘We’re All Blonde’

By CEYLAN YEGINSUMAY 1, 2015

ISTANBUL — The United States ambassador to Turkey “went blond” this week in a post on Instagram that poked fun at the mayor of Ankara, Turkey’s capital, who had made sexist remarks about an American government spokeswoman on Twitter, calling her a “stupid blonde.”

Ambassador John R. Bass, who has dark hair, posted a digitally altered picture of himself with reddish-blond hair on his Instagram account on Thursday. The caption said, “American diplomats: we’re all blonde.”

On Wednesday, the mayor, Melih Gokcek, posted a picture on his Twitter account of the Baltimore police forcibly subduing a looter during the recent unrest there. He criticized Marie Harf, a spokeswoman for the State Department, for her “silence” after she had heavily chastised Turkey for its use of police force during antigovernment protests in 2013.

His Twitter post said, “Where are you, stupid blonde, who accused Turkish police of using disproportionate force?”

“Come on blonde, answer now,” Mr. Gokcek continued in another post.

Mr. Gokcek’s remarks, which aimed to show hypocrisy on the part of the United States even though there have been no accounts of widespread police brutality in Baltimore, immediately went viral on Twitter, attracting thousands of supportive messages from his more than 2.5 million followers.

In a news briefing in Washington on Wednesday, Ms. Harf said she would not dignify Mr. Gokcek’s insults with a response. But she emphasized that President Obama had made extensive comments about the unrest in Baltimore, which was set off by the death of Freddie Gray, a black man who died of injuries he suffered while in police custody.

Mr. Gokcek, a close ally of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey, is one of the most polarizing figures in Turkish politics and regularly targets foreign news outlets and journalists on Twitter.