Former prosecutor probed for allegedly defaming Erdoğan and Davutoğlu

ANKARA – Doğan News Agency

DHA photo

The Istanbul Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office has launched a criminal investigation against former prosecutor Zekeriya Öz, who had been heading the Dec.17 corruption investigation, into his Twitter posts allegedly defaming President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu.

The investigation was launched by the Istanbul Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office on Aug. 2, as Öz was dismissed earlier this year from his prosecutor position by the Supreme Board of Judges and Prosecutors (HSYK), Turkey’s top judicial body.

Those who have no mercy drenched the country in bloodshed, with the death toll of security personnel rising, in endeavor to increase their vote in an early election, Öz posted on Twitter on Aug. 2.

The country is being governed by a temporary prime minister who does not even know that the Gezi Park protests had no connection with the Kurdish peace process, Öz posted the same day.

“The current government would not have been able to be in power had the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) been involved in the Gezi protests,” Öz also posted.

Those enacting laws to try judiciary and security personnel in a bid to overshadow their theft and corruption activities hoped the deaths of security forces would take them to a one-party government, Öz added.

Öz was dismissed as the Istanbul Chief Public Prosecutor on May 12 this year after being rotated to a minor judiciary position, following his launch of the country’s biggest corruption investigation on Dec. 17, 2013, in which sons of three former ministers were implicated.

Öz claimed early January 2014 that he had been threatened by then-Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan to drop the corruption investigation and rejected his rotation to a minor post on Jan. 13, 2014.