Erdogan is Suing Geert Wilders

Turkish President Recep Tayyip “Papa Goat” Erdogan has filed a lawsuit in a Turkish court against Geert Wilders, the leader of the Party for Freedom (Partij voor de Vrijheid, PVV) in the Netherlands. Mr. Erdogan is upset over “insults” by Mr. Wilders as expressed on social media. The Turkish president considers the issue to be under the jurisdiction of Turkish courts because the alleged insults were directed at the office of the presidency.

The incident reminds me of the initiative by Jordan back in 2009, when the Hashemite Kingdom issued a warrant for Mr. Wilders’ arrest and extradition to Jordan to be tried for insulting Islam with his movie Fitna.

Some things never change.

Below are excerpts from a Reuters article about the Turkish lawsuit:

Erdogan files criminal complaint against Dutch politician Wilders

ANKARA (Reuters) — Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan has filed a criminal complaint with Turkish authorities against Dutch far-right leader Geert Wilders saying that he had insulted him on social media, state-owned Anadolu news agency said on Tuesday.

Wilders is one of Europe’s most prominent far-rightists and has been a key figure in shaping the immigration debate in the Netherlands over the past decade, although he has never been in government.

On Saturday Wilders posted a cartoon picture of Erdogan and captioned it “terrorist”. On Monday he posted an image of a sinking ship with a Turkish flag on it. “Bye bye @RTErdogan. Kick Turkey out of NATO,” he said under the image.

Erdogan’s lawyers filed a lawsuit with prosecutors in Ankara on Tuesday, saying Turkish courts had jurisdiction on the matter because the insults were directed at Turkey’s president, Anadolu reported, citing the document filed by the lawyers.

“Even though the crime was committed directly against the person in the presidential seat, the value that is being violated is the state’s political government structure,” the lawyers said, according to Anadolu.

They said the comments by Wilders could not be viewed as freedom expression and that Wilders had targeted Erdogan’s “honour, dignity, character and reputation”.

Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte said the lawsuit as unacceptable.

“I have a message for President Erdogan and the message is very simple. In the Netherlands, we consider freedom of speech one of our most cherished rights and that includes cartoons, including of politicians.”

Ankara has long been critical of the views and policies put forth by Wilders, leader of the Freedom Party. Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu on Sunday called him a “loser racist” trying to gain support with animosity towards Islam and foreigners.

“It is time for Europe to stop its spoiled, fascist-minded politicians,” Cavusoglu said on Twitter.

11 thoughts on “Erdogan is Suing Geert Wilders

  1. As a SYMBOL of islamikkk ideology, erdogan must not be insulted or yada yada, erdogan’s dignity cannot be lampooned. It’s all sacred. Remember what race islam is? The 6th race of humanity. Bugger off.

  2. Erdogan’s “honour, dignity, character and reputation”. Gee, I didn’t know that he had any.
    I suppose that it doesn’t get any “Wilders” than this.

  3. Erdogan is a public figure. He’s subject as such to criticism, ridicule, praise or comments about his persona, his performance or his ideas. If he can’t take the heat, he should remove himself from any public post. And if he is brazen enough to issue his obnoxious comments about the superiority of islam, the inferiority of Israel and such other niceties, he should be willing to withstand as well strong arguments from strong adversaries.

    Shame on Erdogan, the turkish muslim cry-baby-in-chief.

  4. In Turkey “insulting Turkishness” is a crime and many unfortunates languish in prison having been found guilty of this offence, one so broadly defined that it well suits the purposes of power-driven Erdogan.

    So, it’s not surprising that he would direct his lawyers to go after Wilders for these cartoons. What is surprising though is their assertion that Turkish courts have jurisdiction on this matter. What convoluted mental gymnastics did it take for them to come to this conclusion? The Netherlands is a sovereign nation of the modern world and need not cater to the narcissistic whims of the president of the neo-Ottoman Empire.

    Good for Wilders. We need many more brave politicians like him.

  5. I have always respected Geert for his stand against muslim terrorism. I praise him to the sky for calling that muslim murderer what he is.

  6. It never ceases to amaze me how the MSM insists on calling certain politicians “Far rightist”. I know it’s supposed to contrast someone with a “Leftist” – or otherwise known as “socialist”. What most people seem to miss is that there IS no separate “Far Right” It’s all socialism, of a greater or lesser extremist nature. They all meet at the top of the circle!

    Hitler, Mussolini and Stalin were all communists/socialists (Mussolini: “everything within the state, nothing outside the state” – Hitler: Nazionalsozialistische Partei Deutschlands, e.g. German national SOCIALIST party) They just fell out over the international vs the national focus and probably other internecine quarrels.

    I’ve tried to argue this point with my dyed-in-the-wool Labor voting father-in-law, and even if I can see he understands my point and the logic, he just gets angry and won’t even entertain changing his mind. Ideology and pride wins out, and he still votes against his own interest.

    • It is their patronising way of instructing you how to think:
      “With me here is controversial far-Right politician Geert Wilders”.
      Then you know not to disagree.

      • The same “far right” politician who wants a slow rather than fast death of Europe. Bring all of Africa and the Middle West into Europe “LEGALLY”. And making a career as controlled opposition for 20 years by sucking from the teat of “conservatives” who don’t want any actual change in their lives. You can’t keep buying Chinese garbage, you can’t keep sending money to India or Africa, you can’t keep going on your usual business and it won’t take anything less than an ultrasuperduperextrafar-right dictatorship to kick the muslims and their “left and right”-wing enablers out of Europe.

    • Left-right is a false dichotomy. Liberalism and conservatism is the real one.
      In Europe “the right” is liberal, in the US liberalism is associated with the left.
      Liberalism and “the left” are revolutionary, hence the riots all over America. Communists brought into power by violent revolutions from Russia to Cuba. Liberals were brought into power by the French terror, western democratic republics are the product of the French terror and the church-burning liberal revolutions.
      Real conservatism is what left and right call “fascism”. Real conservatism doesn’t exist anymore in the West.
      The so-called “right” is all about liberal economics, free-trade and globalization, hence in Latin America one of the platforms the communists run on is “the fight against neoliberalism”.
      You can be socialist and conservative: China, the USSR (Russification of the occupied countries), 1930s Germany and Italy.
      By the by, “nazi” isn’t short for national socialism, it’s a mockery of the name Ignatz which was common among the German “rednecks” made up by the cosmopolitan weimar degenerates.

  7. using your same institutions against you. But you think you can win by using these same laws and institutions against the enemies of western liberalism. The West has been dead for 200 years.

  8. you didn’t like the truth, did you? left and right is a false dichotomy, liberalism and conservatism is the real one. Conservatives fight to “conserve” the liberal order born from the French terror. You fight to preserve the wealth of your donors and supporters, culture, race, king and country be damned if you can keep buying cheap chinese garbage while westerners starve jobless and homeless outcompeted by the communists.

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