Turkey Indicts Lawmaker After Mass Brawl Highlights Syria Rift
Turkey Probes Lawmaker After Mass Brawl Exposes Rift Over Syria
(Bloomberg) -- Turkish prosecutors indicted an opposition lawmaker for insulting President Recep Tayyip Erdogan during angry exchanges that sparked a parliament brawl, as emotions run high over Turkish losses in Syria’s war.
Punches were thrown late Wednesday when Engin Ozkoc, a lawmaker from the main opposition Republican People’s Party, or CHP, called Erdogan “dishonest” in his reasoning for sending thousands of Turkish troops deep into Syria’s turbulent Idlib province. Insulting the president or other public officials is a crime in Turkey.
Erdogan had earlier leveled similar allegations against CHP leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu after a Syrian government airstrike killed dozens of Turkish soldiers late last month. The president accused Kilicdaroglu of siding with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad as he urged a political solution to avoid further casualties.
Justice Minister Abdulhamit Gul said on Thursday his ministry had approved the indictment of Ozkoc by the prosecutor’s office in Ankara and relayed it to parliament, a necessary step to lift the lawmaker’s immunity and pave the way for his prosecution. Erdogan also filed a slander case against Ozkoc, demanding 1 million liras ($165,000) in compensation, state-run TRT television reported Thursday.
The parliament can lift legal immunity if it approves the indictment with a simple majority with a quorum of lawmakers present.
“Engin Ozkoc will see that there is an answer in the law for what he has done,” Gul said in a tweet late Wednesday.
Turkey is locked in a fierce battle to halt a Russian-backed Syrian government offensive in Idlib province, the country’s last opposition stronghold, fearing its collapse could trigger another exodus of refugees fleeing toward the Turkish frontier.
Ankara has refused a Russian proposal to move its military outposts to the north and massed more troops in the province. Erdogan is holding crunch talks on Thursday with Russian President Vladimir Putin to try to patch up their fraying partnership.
Public support for the army is running high in Turkey, emboldening authorities to tolerate little dissent over the operations in Syria. Erdogan has said the dead soldiers will take their place at “the hill of martyrs.”
Kilicdaroglu accused Erdogan of putting the army in harm’s way to pursue his policies in Syria, where Turkey has been backing rebels against Assad since the beginning of the country’s nine-year civil war.
When the CHP comes to power, “the hill of martyrs will be empty,” Kilicdaroglu said.
To contact the reporters on this story: Selcan Hacaoglu in Ankara at shacaoglu@bloomberg.net;Firat Kozok in Ankara at fkozok@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Onur Ant at oant@bloomberg.net, Mark Williams, Amy Teibel
©2020 Bloomberg L.P.