Lawsuit for Damages by AKP’s Binali Yıldırım Against Daily Evrensel

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Binali Yıldırım, the ruling Justice and Development Party's (AKP) İstanbul Metropolitan Mayoral candidate who lost the elections to opposition's candidate Ekrem İmamoğlu by a margin of over 800 thousand votes, has filed a lawsuit for damages against the daily Evrensel.

Yıldırım requested 25 thousand Turkish Lira (TRY) in damages from the newspaper due to a news report published on evrensel.net website entitled "#YouDidIt Reaction against Yıldırım on Social Media" one week before the June 23 İstanbul repeat elections.

As reported by the Evrensel, the petition of Yıldırım was submitted to court two days before the elections. The İstanbul Anatolian 12th Court of First Instance has accepted that the lawsuit continue as a lawsuit for damages.

The newspaper has further reported that the petition of Yıldırım indicated that the news report in question was full of lies and slanders, thereby violating his personal rights and inflicting non-pecuniary damages to him.

The report entitled "#YouDidIt Reaction Against Yıldırım on Social Media" by Evrensel reported on social media posts making fun of of the election slogan of the AKP that read "We did it, we will do it again".

Lawyer Avcı: It shows how closed they are to criticism

Commenting on the lawsuit, Evrensel's lawyer Devrim Avcı has said, "This lawsuit for damages filed by Binali Yıldırım, like the ones he previously filed, indicates how closed he is to being criticized."

Reminding that journalists are faced with lawsuits, access bans, judiciary fines or prison sentences for their news critical of the AKP, Avcı has underlined that such cases are not the normalcy.

"These cases show that the political authority and its senior officials interpret the concepts of freedom of express and freedom of press as they see fit", Avcı has commented further. (EKN/SD)