Nov. 11 () –
Turkey’s Interior Minister, Suleiman Soylu, has sued the opposition leader and president of the People’s Republican Party, Kemal Kilicdaroglu, understanding as an insult the accusations made by the latter that he was responsible for facilitating drug trafficking in the country to alleviate the public deficit.
It all started at the end of October, with the arrest in Istanbul of the Montenegrin drug trafficker Zelkjo Bojanic, when the CHP leader accused the Minister of the Interior and, in general, the Turkish security services of facilitating the activities of the criminal and his gang.
Bojanic’s arrest brought to mind accusations made by another mafia boss, Sedat Peker, who last year linked the Justice and Development Party of the country’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, to being a participant in international drug trafficking.
Peker, who lives in exile in the United Arab Emirates, went so far as to affirm that Erkan Yildirim, son of former Prime Minister Binali Yildirim, one of the most important figures in the AKP, was part of an important drug trafficking network between Venezuela and Turkey, according to the portal ‘Turkish Minute’.
“The minister would resign if he had an ounce of dignity,” Kilicdaroglu said at the time in a video posted on his Twitter account. An outraged Soylu replied on the same network that “who has no dignity” was his political rival, to which Kilicdaroglu responded by suing him for “insults” for a “symbolic” amount of 5 Turkish liras (25 euro cents) .
This Friday, Soylu has presented his counterclaim for a significantly higher figure: one million Turkish liras, approximately 54,000 euros, which is added to the one already presented by the General Directorate of Security (EGM) after accusing the opposition leader of making a ” misinformation exercise.
