AKP member discharged after attacking disabled CHP deputy via Twitter

ISTANBUL

Şafak Pavey in parliament. AA Photo

A member of the Justice and Development Party (AKP) was discharged from the political group after attacking Republican People's Party (CHP) deputy Şafak Pavey on Twitter by hinting she was still faithless although God had made her disabled, daily Hürriyet has reported.

“God has taken one of your legs and you haven't waken up from the sleep of blasphemy. What obstinacy!” AKP member Melik Birgin wrote on Twitter.

“I got used to insults, which continue constantly and greedily as a disabled person, but it is the first time I’ve faced it officially via a Twitter message,” Pavey said in a response made during a press conference. “Only the social prestige [which he thinks he gained after saying those words] can give him such arrogance to threaten [people's] divine sins by physical punishments,” Pavey said.

“The hate wafting from his words is not what makes me sick. The thing that makes me scared is that people who live with hatred believe what they do is right,” she said.

After the incident shook the social media network Deputy Prime Minister Hüseyin Çelik apologized to Pavey with an official statement issued via Twitter.

“The tweet posted to CHP Istanbul Deputy Şafak Pavey made all of us sick,” Çelik said. “I hope the person will apologize to Pavey personally. I apologize to Pavey just because the person was a member of the AKP,” Çelik twitted.

Çelik also highlighted that Birgin was only a member of the AKP, not a member of the AKP's Youth Branch of Malatya as Pavey had said before.

Birgin was released from his AKP membership after he apologized to Pavey.

Pavey had lost her left arm and leg in an accident while helping a friend in a wheelchair board a train in Zurich, Switzerland.