President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan on June 2 filed legal papers against former Pentagon official Michael Rubin over perceived “insults.”
The nine-page complaint, which was lodged with the Ankara Chief Prosecutor’s office by Erdoğan’s lawyer Hüseyin Aydın, accused Rubin, an American Enterprise Institute (AEI) analyst, of insulting the president.
“Rubin’s illogical accusations and insulting tweets are not only a reflection of his hatred and anger toward President Erdoğan but also against the Turkish Republic,” Erdoğan’s complaint said, according to Anadolu Agency.
Rubin is accused of supporting and committing offenses for the Fethullahist Terror Organization (FETÖ), which is blamed for the July 2016 failed coup attempt.
In his columns and tweets, Rubin accused the Turkish President of using the coup attempt “to purge society of political and ideological opponents.”
“Support for Erdoğan is in no way support for Islam and Turkish dignity. Backing Erdoğan will be support for corruption and the collapse of Turkey,” he wrote in a tweet in Turkish.
In another column on the AEI website, he said, “Erdoğan has nobody to blame for the coup but himself,” adding that the president’s foreign policy of “no problems with neighbors” had caused problems with “almost every neighbor.”
In a story titled “Extradite Gülen? Really?” Rubin wrote: “What’s going on isn’t about Gülen. It’s a power play [of Erdoğan].”
Fethullah Gülen is accused of a long-running campaign to overthrow the state by infiltrating the Turkish state, particularly the military, police and judiciary.
He has been living in self-imposed exile in Pennsylvania since 1999.
