After calling protesters ‘Bitches’… Does Turkish Judiciary condemn Erdogan?
After Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan called the Gezi Park protesters “bitches’, questions were raised about the attitude of the Turkish judiciary, which categorizes the term as an “insult”.
During a speech on Wednesday, Erdogan lashed out at those who wanted to commemorate the ninth anniversary of the Gezi Park protests, calling them “corrupt” and “prostitutes”, Turkish daily Zaman reported.
According to the Turkish newspaper, Erdogan’s statements have dominated social media in Turkey, with sürtük, which in Arabic means “bitch”, becoming the most widely circulated word on Twitter.
In attacking the protesters, Erdogan said: “The spark, which started nine years ago under the pretext of protecting trees, suddenly turned into a protest, and those who organized the protest almost polluted the mosques from within”.
Erdogan added: “These are corrupt, prostitutes, bandits, terrorists, we already know which forces were behind the Gezi events, Mr.
Republican People’s Party Chairman Kemal Kilicdaroglu was there with them”.
In 2014, a Turkish court in Antalya fined a lawyer, Tawfiq Ashlama, for insulting a group of female lawyers as “Bitches”.
The incident dates back to 2013 when members of the Committee on Women’s Rights of the Antalya Bar Association nominated the lawyer registered with the Van City Bar Association, Magda Tuzbi Erdem, for the Ugur Mumcu Award, which is presented every January.
The board of directors of the union decided to award the prize to Erdem. In response to the criticism raised by this decision, the board of directors of the association declined to grant the award to Erdem. For their part, members of the human rights committee decided to organize a protest to denounce the association’s reversal.
On the basis of the communication submitted by the female lawyers, a judicial action was brought against Ashlama, during which the second chamber of the Magistrate’s Court of Antalya recognized Ashlama’s offense against the female lawyers and imposed a judicial fine of 365 days.
The judge later increased the sentence to 531 days, for the multiple commission of the offense, but the court decided to reduce it to 442 days by taking into account his good conduct during the trial.
The court set the fine at 20 pounds per day, bringing the total fine to 8,840 pounds.
On Wednesday, Turkish police clashed with protesters around Istanbul’s main Taksim Square as they gathered to commemorate anti-government demonstrations that broke out in 2013 in the nearby Gezi Park.
