ISTANBUL // President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's lawyer has lodged a complaint against a former French diplomat, accusing him of inciting the Turkish leader's assassination, Turkey's state-run news agency reported on Monday.
The move follows comments by Philippe Moreau Defarges about the outcome of Turkey's April 16 referendum on controversial constitutional changes that will tighten the president's grip on power.
Mr Defarges, now a senior fellow at the French Institute of International Relations, said all legal paths to challenge Mr Erdogan had been shut off and that the only two options left were civil war or assassination.
The "Yes" camp won just over 51 per cent of the vote in the referendum, a narrower-than-expected victory. But Turkey's top election board last week rejected opposition calls to annul the ballot after complaints of vote-rigging.
Mr Defarges said on Saturday that Mr Erdogan's strengthened powers would lead "only to catastrophe".
"There will either be a civil war or another scenario ... his assassination," he said.
Huseyin Aydin, a lawyer representing Mr Erdogan, said in a petition to an Ankara prosecutor that the comments were not a simple expression of opinion, but were "clearly instigating the crime in question".
He said the comments showed how far hostility against Mr Erdogan had reached in the West, and suggested Mr Defarges should undergo checks for his mental health if he ever came to Turkey.
"And if he is in good health mentally, his alleged links with the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) or US-based Muslim cleric Fethullah Gulen blamed by the Turkish government for orchestrating the failed July coup should be investigated," Mr Aydin added.
Mr Defarges' comments went viral on social media, with a senior Erdogan adviser calling on the French institute to revoke his fellowship.
"Former French diplomat openly calls for assassination of president Erdogan. @IFRI_ should terminate his fellowship, apologise," Gulnur Aybet tweeted.
"What would be the reaction if a former diplomat&senior fellow at a Turkish think tank called for the assassination of the French president?"
Mr Defarges on Sunday offered "sincere apologies" for his remarks.
"Some of what I said was clumsy and might have been wrongly interpreted," he tweeted.
Critics of the constitutional changes say they will lead to one-man rule in Turkey.
The same critics also accuse Mr Erdogan of becoming increasingly authoritarian after 14 years in power - first as prime minister and then as president.
* Agence France-Presse
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