AKP Mayor sues 600 of his followers

ISTANBUL

AA photo

Ankara Major Melih Gökçek declared in an interview aired on television that he has taken legal action against 600 of his Twitter followers who had insulted him, reported daily Hürriyet on Nov. 9.  

"It's me who tweets, not someone else in my place and I sue those who insult me. There are about 600 people now that I’ve sued. In the beginning we weren't able to catch them with the speed of social media, but now we can. We caught approximately 80 percent of those who have insulted me. When you give their names and accounts to police, they find themselves in front of prosecutors. But if they apologize publicly, then I say they're young and forgive them," said Gökçek.

Gökçek has a total of 367,995 followers on Twitter. He says he hasn’t been able to spend a lot of time on Twitter lately because of his intense election campaign agenda for upcoming local elections.

Local elections will take place in March 2014 according to the government’s latest decision.

The date of municipal elections recently stirred debate between political parties.