Erdoğan’s lawyer files ‘insult’ complaint against HDP co-chair

ANKARA – Anadolu Agency

DHA photo

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s lawyer has filed a criminal complaint against Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) co-chair Selahattin Demirtaş, claiming that the latter “insulted” him in a recent speech.

The indictment filed to the Ankara Chief Prosecutor’s Office by Erdoğan’s lawyer Hüseyin Aydın included related sections from Demirtaş’s speech at a HDP meeting in the southern province of Mersin on Feb. 27. 

It said these statements amounted to “insulting the president,” which is a crime according to Article 299 of the Turkish Penal Code.

During his party’s Mersin meeting, Demirtaş had said: “He [Erdoğan] wants to be the caliphate of Islam. But thieves cannot be caliphs.”

The indictment said Kurdish-issue focused HDP co-chair Demirtaş’s remarks “cannot be considered within the scope of freedom of thought and expression.”

It also said they “cannot be defended legally as they amounted to statements beneath one’s dignity and honor.”
Since becoming president in August 2014, Erdoğan’s lawyers have filed hundreds of lawsuits over alleged “insults” uttered by schoolchildren, journalists, and opposition politicians.