Erdogan accuses French researcher of ‘inciting assassination’

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s lawyer is lodging a complaint against a former French diplomat accusing him of inciting the assassination of the Turkish leader, the state-run news agency reports.

The move follows comments by Philippe Moreau Defarges about the outcome of the April 16 referendum on controversial constitutional changes that will tighten the president’s grip on power.

Defarges, now a senior fellow at the French Institute of International Relations, said all legal paths to challenge Erdogan had been shut off and that the only two options left were civil war or assassination.

Huseyin Aydin, a lawyer representing Erdogan, says in a petition to an Ankara prosecutor that the comments were not a simple expression of opinion, but were “clearly instigating the crime in question.”

— AFP