Main opposition’s Kaftancıoğlu under investigation for 'insulting president'

The İstanbul Chief Public Prosecutor's Office has launched an investigation against the İstanbul provincial chair of the main opposition Republican People's Party (CHP) on charges of "insulting the president," T24 news site reported on Monday.

The ex-officio probe against Canan Kaftancıoğlu is based on the CHP officials’s remarks on Friday, when she made an apparent reference to President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan as a dictator, T24 said. 

"We are going to send a dictator from this country my way of democracy,” it cited the CHP Istanbul chairwoman as saying during an address to her party’s Istanbul youth branch chairs.

A separate criminal complain has been filed against the 50-year-old opposition figure over her speech, accusing her insulted Eroğan and violating his personal rights, according to T24.

Kaftancıoğlu has become targeted in numerous lawsuits upon emerging as a standout opposition figure in Turkey after the CHP won the mayoral seat for Istanbul in local elections in 2019, defeating the governing Justice and Development Party (AKP).

The CHP Istanbul head in May was sentenced to 4 years and 11 months in prison on charges on "insulting a civil servant,” "insulting the president," and “insulting the Turkish state,” over her social media posts from eight years ago, T24 news site reported.

The leading Turkish opposition figure was dismissed from the CHP and thus banned from politics over the convictions, but the CHP has dismissed the court’s ruling and kept the controversial official as the party’s Istanbul chairwoman.

The Turkish government has charged thousands, including citizens, of insulting Erdoğan in social media posts, cartoons, news reports and other media since he assumed office as president in 2014.