CHP leader to pay 20,000 lira compensation to president for ‘insult’

ANKARA

DHA photo

A local court in Ankara has ordered the leader of Turkey’s main opposition party to pay 20,000 Turkish Liras in compensation to President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan for insulting the head of state.

Erdoğan had taken Republican People’s Party (CHP) leader Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu to court over playing leaked tape recordings involving corruption claims that engulfed former government officials during his tenure as prime minister, before he was elected as president in August 2014.

Arguing that the CHP leader “insulted” him at his party’s parliamentary group meeting and at some rallies by playing “fabricated” tapes about him and his family, Erdoğan demanded 200,000 liras in compensation on the grounds that the recording, exposition and spread of such tapes constitutes a crime.

The Ankara 5th Civil Court of First Instance eventually ordered the CHP leader on Sept. 10 to pay 20,000 liras to Erdoğan.

The tape recordings, one of which Kılıçdaroğlu played during a parliamentary group meeting in February 2014, were related to “bribery and forgery” in relation to the now-dropped Dec. 17 and 25, 2013, corruption cases, which centered on four former ministers and their relatives.

On Sept. 1, 2014, the Istanbul Chief Prosecutor’s Office controversially ruled that there were no legal grounds for the prosecution of 96 suspects, including Bilal Erdoğan, the president’s son, who were accused by prosecutors of bribery and corruption in the Dec. 25, 2013 probe.

The earlier and larger of the two corruption dossiers, meanwhile, was dropped by the newly assigned prosecutor in October 2014. Some 53 graft suspects, including former ministers’ sons, the former manager of Halkbank, and a controversial Iranian-Azeri businessman were implicated in the Dec. 17 investigation.