Turkey’s Interior Minister, Suleiman Soylu, has sued opposition leader and chairman of the Republican People’s Party, Kemal Kilicdaroglu, after he considered as an insult the accusations made by the latter that he was responsible for facilitating drug trafficking in the country in order to alleviate the public deficit.
It all began at the end of October, with the arrest in Istanbul of the Montenegrin drug trafficker Zelkjo Bojanic, when the CHP leader accused the Interior Minister 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 involved in international drug trafficking.
Peker, who lives in exile in the United Arab Emirates, went so far as to claim that Erkan Yildirim, son of former Prime Minister Binali Yildirim, one of the AKP’s most important figures, was part of a major drug trafficking network between Venezuela and Turkey, as recalled by the ‘Turkish Minute’ portal.
«The minister would resign if he had a single ounce of dignity,» Kilicdaroglu assured at the time in a video posted on his Twitter account. An indignant Soylu replied on the same network that «who has no dignity» was his political rival, to which Kilicdaroglu responded by suing him for «insult» for a «symbolic» amount of 5 Turkish liras (25 euro cents).
This Friday, Soylu has filed his counter-suit for a significantly higher amount: one million Turkish Liras, approximately 54,000 euros, which is in addition to the one already filed by the General Directorate of Security (EGM) after accusing the opposition leader of making an «exercise of disinformation».
