ISTANBUL: President Tayyip Erdogan has filed a lawsuit against the leader of Turkey’s main opposition party over “baseless” comments linking the president to the Muslim cleric Ankara blames for a failed 2016 coup, Erdogan’s lawyer said on Thursday.
The cleric, Fethullah Gulen, was once a close ally of Erdogan’s government, but they fell out in recent years. Turkish authorities declared Gulen’s movement a terrorist organization in 2016 and accused his supporters of instigating the military putsch later that year in which 250 people were killed.
Tens of thousands of people have been detained on charges of links to Gulen’s movement in the security crackdown that followed the attempt to overthrow Erdogan.
The head of the secular opposition People’s Republican Party (CHP,) Kemal Kilicdaroglu, said this week Erdogan had been closer to Gulen than any other Turkish politician.
“The political arm of the Gulenist network is the person who is occupying the presidency,” Kilicdaroglu said in a speech to members of his party in Ankara. “The number one political arm of Gulenist network, the number one defendant, is the person who occupies the presidency.”
Lawyer Huseyin Aydin dismissed the accusation, saying it was clear to everyone Erdogan was leading the fight against Gulen and that the president was seeking 250,000 lira ($63,000) in damages.
“We have filed a lawsuit because of Kilicdaroglu’s unfair and baseless accusations directed toward our president,” Aydin said on Twitter.
Gulen, who has lived in self-imposed exile in Pennsylvania since 1999, has denied involvement in the abortive coup.
The UN human rights office said earlier this month Turkey has detained 160,000 people and dismissed nearly the same number of civil servants since July 2016. Of those detained, 50,000 have been formally charged and kept in jail during trial.
Erdogan, who has dominated Turkish politics for 15 years as prime minister and then president, has had multiple spats with Kilicdaroglu that produced more than 20 court cases. ($1 = 3.9855 liras)
Turkey’s Erdogan sues opposition party chief over Gulen comments
Turkey’s Erdogan sues opposition party chief over Gulen comments
Israeli settlers forcibly enter Palestinian home in latest West Bank attack
- The settlers killed three sheep and injured four more, smashed a door and a window of the home
- Police said they arrested the five settlers on suspicion of trespassing onto Palestinian land
JERUSALEM: Israeli settlers attacked a Palestinian home in the south of the Israeli-occupied West Bank overnight, breaking in and killing sheep, a Palestinian official said Tuesday. It was the latest in a surge of attacks by settlers against Palestinians in the territory in recent months.
Israeli police said they arrested five settlers.
The settlers killed three sheep and injured four more, smashed a door and a window of the home, and fired tear gas inside, sending three Palestinian children under the age of 4 to the hospital, said Amir Dawood, who directs an office documenting such attacks within a Palestinian governmental body called the Wall and Settlement Resistance Commission.
Police said they arrested the five settlers on suspicion of trespassing onto Palestinian land, damaging property and dispensing pepper spray, not tear gas. They said they are investigating.
CCTV video from the attack in the town of As Samu’, shared by the commission, showed five masked settlers in dark clothing, some with batons, approaching the home and appearing to enter. Sounds of smashing are heard, as well as animal noises. Another video from inside shows masked figures appearing to strike sheep in the stable.
Photos of the aftermath, also shared by the commission, show smashed car windows and a shattered front door. Bloodied sheep lie dead as others stand with blood staining their wool. Inside the home, photos show broken glass and the furniture ransacked.
Dawood said it was the second settler attack on the family in less than two months. He called it “part of a systematic and ongoing pattern of settler violence targeting Palestinian civilians, their property and their means of livelihood, carried out with impunity under the protection of the Israeli occupation.”
During October’s olive harvest, settlers across the territory launched an average of eight attacks daily, the most since the United Nations humanitarian office began collecting data in 2006. The attacks continued in November, with the UN recording at least 136 by Nov. 24.
Israel occupied the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza — areas claimed by the Palestinians for a future state — in the 1967 war. It has settled over 500,000 Jews in the West Bank, in addition to over 200,000 in contested East Jerusalem.
Israel’s government is dominated by far-right proponents of the settler movement, including Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and Cabinet Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, who oversees the nation’s police force. Earlier this week, Smotrich said the Israeli cabinet had approved a proposal for 19 new Jewish settlements, another blow to the possibility of a Palestinian state.
