Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has filed a criminal complaint against French researcher and political scientist Philippe Moreau Defarges due to his remarks calling for the assassination of Erdoğan.
Speaking to French broadcaster BFM on Saturday about the results of a public referendum held in Turkey on April 16, Defarges said since objections from opposition groups in Turkey about the referendum results, which gave Erdoğan more power, have been rejected by the election authority, there are two options left, either a civil war or the assassination of Erdoğan.
When the host of the program said an assassination cannot be seen as legitimate even over a political crisis, Defarges said: “What has been done to unjust leaders for centuries, since the time of the Roman Empire? This also exists in big religions. It is an important debate.”
When Defarges’s remarks attracted widespread criticism from among Turks both in France and Turkey, he made a statement from his Twitter account on Sunday and apologized.
However, Erdoğan’s lawyer Hüseyin Aydın filed a criminal complaint against Defarges at the Ankara Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office on Monday on charges of an assassination attempt and an attack on the president.