President Erdoğan files lawsuit against CHP lawmaker

ANKARA

President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan on Dec. 21 filed a lawsuit for mental anguish against the Republican People’s Party (CHP) Group Deputy Chair Özgür Özel amounting to 250,000 Turkish Liras.

Erdoğan filed the lawsuit for “insulting” him at the speech that Özel delivered at the parliament last week.

The petition, which included some parts of Özel’s speech, cited that the lawmaker and his party were identifying Erdoğan as a “dictator with the intent of insulting the president.”

This is “a reflection of the perception operation and authoritarian propaganda that has been tried to put over at home and abroad for a long time,” the petition also said.

“As is known, in the period before the July 15 [2016] coup attempt, a widespread campaign was launched under the leadership of the FETÖ terrorist organization in order to create a ‘one-man dictator’ perception towards our president,” the petition noted.

In the petition, Erdoğan accused the CHP and its lawmakers of embracing this campaign and making an intense effort to create a “one-man dictator” perception about the president.

FETÖ and its U.S.-based leader Fetullah Gülen is accused of orchestrating the defeated coup of July 15, 2016, which left 251 people killed and nearly 2,200 injured.

In his speech, Özel said the first person to have used the term “fifth column” - an expression aimed to describe espionage activities - was Franco, the Spanish dictator, while reacting to Erdoğan’s “fifth column” accusation against the opposition.