Erdoğan files criminal complaint against Bundestag vice president
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President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has filed a criminal complaint against Wolfgang Kubicki, the vice president of Germany's Federal Parliament.
Through his attorney in Cologne, Mustafa Kaplan, Erdoğan yesterday (Deptember 29) filed a complaint with the Hildesheim Prosecutor's Office, demanding Kubicki be put on trial for "insult and slander," Deutsche Welle Turkish reported.
Kubicki had called Erdoğan a "sewer rat" (abwasserratte) in the in a speech he delivered last week as part of the Lower Saxony state election campaign.
He told Germany's state-run news agency dpa that he would not hesitate to enter into a legal fight against Erdoğan.
The fact that Erdoğan has filed about 200,000 similar lawsuits since he became the president speaks for itself, said the politician.
Attorney Kaplan told DW Turkish, "Mr. Kubicki is an experiences politician, a renowned lawyer and also the vide president of the Federal Parliament. He is of the qualification to know his words are insulting, and insult is a crime. He knowingly insulted [Erdoğan] and should pay the price for that."
In 2016, Erdoğan had also filed a criminal complaint against Jan Böhmermann, a comedian from Germany, for "insulting a foreign state official."
Prosecutors had dismissed that investigation, and the mentioned offense had been removed from the country's criminal code.
Trials for 'insulting the president' in TürkiyeSince 2014, when Erdoğan was elected the president, investigations have been launched against over 160 thousand people for "insulting the President". More than 35 thousand turned into court cases. In these trials, over 38 thousand people and more than a thousand children appeared before the judge. The number of cases during Erdoğan's first 4-year term in office increased by 19.5 times and by 2,052 percent when compared to the term of former President Abdullah Gül. In the trials, 12 thousand 881 people have been convicted, 3 thousand 625 people, including 10 children, have been sentenced to prison. In 2020 alone, 45 thousand investigations were launched against people on the charge of "insulting the President" and lawsuits were filed against 9 thousand 773 people as a result of these investigations. According to the BİA Media Monitoring Report published on January 10, 2022, and covering the months of October-November-December 2021, at least 22 journalists and cartoonists were faced with this charge in this period. According to the BİA Media Monitoring 2021 Annual Report, from August 2014, when Erdoğan was elected the President, to January 1, 2022, at least 70 journalists were given prison sentences, deferred prison sentences and/or fines for "insulting the President". Article 299 of the Turkish Penal Code A person convicted of "insulting the president" as per the Article 299 of the Turkish Penal Code (TCK) is sentenced to 1 year to 4 years in prison. If the offense is committed publicly, the sentence is increased by one sixth. Prosecution on this charge is subject to the permission of the Justice Ministry. However, it is regarded as a formality and it is not known, according to the reports, whether there is any person for whom no permission has been granted by the Ministry to be prosecuted on this charge. |
(SD/VK)
