Erdogan Slapped with Opposition Lawsuits over Targeting Gezi Protesters
A left-wing opposition party and a lawmaker with the main opposition party have filed criminal complaints against President Recep Tayyip Erdogan over his use of profanity in reference to Gezi protesters, T24 news site reported on Thursday.
The lawsuit submitted by the People’s Liberation Party (HKP) accuses the Turkish president of “insulting” the people of the Turkish nation and “inciting people into animosity and hatred,” for calling participants in the 2013 nationwide protests “tramps,’’ it said.
A separate criminal complaint was submitted by Republican People’s Party (CHP) lawmaker Sevda Erdan Kılıç over the remarks, the deputy announced on Twitter.
“They (Gezi protestors) are rotten to the core, they are tramps,” Cumhuriyet newspaper cited Erdogan as saying on Wednesday, using the word “sürtük’’in Turkish.The remarks arrived on the 9th anniversary of the demonstrations, the biggest popular challenge to then-Premier Tayyip Erdogan’s rule.
The Gezi protests began in May 2013 out as a small sit-in against the proposed destruction of Taksim’s Gezi Park, one of city’s few remaining green spaces, to make way for a shopping mall and mushroomed into nationwide mass protests after police waded in with batons and tear-gas to break up the demonstration.
A total of 11 people killed and 8,000 injured as police used tear-gas, water cannon, baton charges and occasionally live ammunition to put down the protests.
Erdoğan has long used derogatory terms in reference to the Gezi protests, including “çapulcu,” meaning looters, a term which was embraced by demonstrators and used in slogans.
The Turkish president’s words on Wednesday became a trending topic on Turkish Twitter, as social media users condemned the leader over his choice of wording.
The court case against Gezi protests is considered to be among the most notorious and deliberately convoluted political prosecutions pursued by Erdoğan’s government. In April, a Turkish court sentenced businessman and human rights defender Osman Kavala to life in prison and seven others to 18 years each on charges of instigating the protests. The verdict sparked Turkey-wide protests.
