Erdogan denounces the vice president of the Bundestag for calling him a “sewer rat”

COLOGNE/BERLIN, 30 Sep. (DPA/EP) –

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has filed a criminal complaint against Deputy Speaker of the German Parliament Wolfgang Kubicki, who called the president a “sewer rat” after criticizing his immigration policy.

The lawyer for the German city of Cologne Mustafa Kaplan confirmed the filing of the complaint on behalf of Erdogan with the Prosecutor’s Office of the German city of Hildesheim, in the federal state of Lower Saxony, for libel and defamation.

Kubicki of the Liberal Party (FDP) had called Erdogan a “little sewer rat” when commenting on the Turkish leader’s immigration policy. When asked by DPA about it, he said he was not worried about a possible legal dispute with Erdogan.

According to an article in the German publication ‘Der Spiegel’, Kaplan’s complaint to the Prosecutor’s Office argues that Kubicki’s statement was “derogatory towards the affected person” and an “illegal attack on honor”. Ankara even summoned the German ambassador over Kubicki’s statement.

“The fact that Erdogan has initiated some 200,000 such procedures since his term began in 2014 says it all,” Kubicki replied, explaining that “a sewer rat is a small, intelligent and cunning creature, so who also appears as the protagonist of children’s stories, such as in (the animated film) ‘Ratatouille'”.