Erdogan Files Complaint After French Magazine Calls Him ‘The Eradicator’

(Bloomberg) -- President Recep Tayyip Erdogan filed a legal complaint in Turkey over a cover story in the Oct. 24 issue of French magazine Le Point, which described him as “The Eradicator.”

Erdogan’s lawyer filed the complaint against the magazine’s publisher, Etienne Gernelle, and journalist Romain Gubert to the chief prosecutor in Ankara, alleging that they insulted the president, state-run Anadolu Agency reported on Friday.

The magazine’s cover uses a photo of the Turkish leader giving a soldier’s salute, with a tagline that reads, “Ethnic cleansing, Ergodan style,” and a second tagline that asks, “Will we let him massacre the Kurds (and threaten Europe)?”

The crime of insulting the president carries a prison sentence of as much as four years and eight months in Turkey.

“He’s accusing us of the crime of lèse-majesté, which confirms our earlier cover that called him a dictator,” Gernelle said. “We’re free to write what we want. Evidently he has a problem with freedom.”

--With assistance from Vidya Root.

To contact the reporter on this story: Ugur Yilmaz in Istanbul at uyilmaz@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Onur Ant at oant@bloomberg.net, Taylan Bilgic, Alan Katz

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