ISTANBUL
An Istanbul public prosecutor has ruled for nonsuit in President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s legal case against Turkey's Hurriyet newspaper's news director, Izzet Dogan, citing a lack of evidence.
Last May, Erdogan took legal action against Dogan for apparently insulting and threatening him in an online story headlined: "World in shock: Death sentence for president who won 52 percent of the vote."
Erdogan’s case argued that the headline was “threatening him with the death penalty handed down to former president of Egypt, Mohamed Morsi”.
The Muslim Brotherhood leader was sentenced to death last June over charges of espionage and a mass jailbreak incident in 2011 during demonstrations that removed the then Egyptian leader, Hosni Mubarak.
Erdogan, Turkey's 12th President, was elected on August 10, 2014, also with around 52 percent of the vote.
The Turkish leader’s case accused the newspaper of “insulting and threatening a president”, “inciting the public to armed action against the Turkish Republic”, “praising the crime and the offender” and of working “to demolish the constitutional order”.
However, according to today’s verdict, the Hurriyet story was published with a video of Erdogan criticizing the death penalty handed down to Morsi, with an accompanying headline: "First reaction from Erdogan to death sentence in Egypt."
The prosecutor, Mustafa Gokay, said that the story was within the framework of freedom of the press and that there was an overall lack of evidence on which to file a criminal case.
