Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan filed a lawsuit Thursday against opposition Parliament member Engin Özkoç under charges of “insulting the president,” a crime in Turkey.
Özkoç, a member of the secularist Republican People’s Party (CHP), described Erdogan as “dishonorable, ignoble, low and treacherous” in remarks on the Parliament floor on Wednesday and accused him of disrespecting Turkish soldiers by forcing them to go to war in Syria and Libya. His remarks triggered a melee involving what appeared to be dozens of lawmakers, a semi-routine occurrence in Turkey.
Erdogan announced a military operation named “Operation Spring Shield” last week, designed to protect Idlib, Syria’s last opposition stronghold, from a Russian-backed invasion by dictator Bashar al-Assad. Erdogan has attempted for years to maintain close relations with Moscow despite vehemently opposing the rule of Russia’s ally Assad, at one point declaring that he would send Turkish troops into battle in Syria “to end the rule of the tyrant Assad” and “not for any other reason.” The latest invasion has proven significantly unpopular in Turkey, particularly among CHP supporters.
The CHP has long been the largest opposition party in Turkey, founded by the founder of Turkey itself, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, since Erdogan’s Islamist Justice and Development Party (AKP) took over at the turn of the century. Erdogan has moved to shut down other burgeoning opposition parties through mass arrests of party leaders and elected officials, most notably the People’s Democratic Party (HDP), a pro-Kurdish leftist party.
According to the Turkish newspaper Hurriyet, Erdogan is seeking 1 million lira ($163,572.40) in damages from Özkoç in a civil lawsuit against him for his insults. “Insulting the president” is a separate infraction, and considered a more severe one, than general defamation in Turkey. Özkoç will also face criminal charges for “insulting the president” under Article 299 of the Turkish Penal Code, the newspaper noted, adding that it appears Özkoç will face charges not only for his remarks on the Parliament floor, but criticism of the Islamist ruling party in a press conference Wednesday.
Özkoç wrote on Twitter that his remarks included, in part, “A person who became the co-chair of the Greater Middle East Project, who approves the slaughter of three million Muslims, who calls martyrs ‘heads’ is undignified, dishonorable, honorless! This person cannot be the President of the Republic of Turkey!”
The Greater Middle East Project is considered a euphemism for an Islamic Turkish caliphate, presumably with Erdogan as its head. It is not clear what “the slaughter of three million Muslims” refers to, though some believe it is a reference to those killed during the Armenian genocide, which Erdogan does not acknowledge happened. Turkey has attempted to use diplomatic measures to punish any government that acknowledges the millions Atatürk killed to found his Muslim secularist ethnostate.
The remarks, which occurred after Özkoç’s similar press conference, promised violent disarray.
Similar brawls have erupted at least once a year since the failed coup against Erdogan in July 2016. In December, lawmakers came to blows over the potential privatization of the government’s military tank factory, supported by the AKP but aggressively opposed by the CHP. In 2018, a law that would grant Erdogan’s government significant power over drawing electoral districts and assigning voting locations triggered the violence. In 2017, the debate descended to violence over Erdogan’s ploy to move from a parliamentary system to a presidential system. The latter, which Erdogan eventually achieved, granted Erdogan the powers of the prime minister and eliminated that office, but did not create any of the checks that exist in presidential systems like America’s over the executive branch.
The year 2016 witnessed at least two parliamentary brawls, both over Erdogan’s proposition to eliminate legal immunity for lawmakers. Lawmakers speaking on the floor of Parliament could previously speak freely without worrying about violating laws like that banning “insulting the president. At the time, the AKP’s priority was to prosecute HDP members for supporting Kurdish groups in southern Turkey, who faced increasing persecution as Erdogan associated all ethnic Kurds with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), a Marxist terrorist organization.
Five legislators were injured and four hospitalized in a brawl in 2015 over a “homeland security” bill that greately expanded Erdogan’s power to use force against political opponents he deemed violent threats. That brawl occurred prior to the failed coup against Erdogan, when the president used the alleged coup to arrest thousands of political dissidents, including elected officials.
The CHP has been loudly critical of “Operation Spring Shield,” accusing Erdogan of prompting the deaths of Turkish soldiers for a foreign war that has little to do with Turkey. Erdogan has insisted on the invasion arguing that Turkey has been the hardest-hit country as a result of the refugee crisis triggered by the Syrian Civil War. According to the United Nations, over 3.5 million Syrian refugees have fled to Turkey, putting a severe strain on the Turkish government’s ability to offer social programs and housing. Erdogan has repeatedly insisted that military action in Syria was meant to help repatriate refugees. His programs have notably promoted the “repatriation” of Arab Syrians to Kurdish areas, which Kurds have accused of being a plot to ethnically cleanse their homeland.
Erdogan launched an air assault against Assad and, by proxy, the Russian military, this week, claiming to shoot down two Syrian warplanes, blow up a military convoy, and kill nearly two dozen Syrian soldiers. Erdogan’s government has insisted the actions were necessary because of a Syrian attack on Turkey’s military presence in the country that killed at least 33 soldiers last week.
The new hostilities have triggered yet another wave of refugees out of Idlib, which Erdogan has responded to by opening Turkey’s western borders and urging refugees to move on to Europe.