PodcastErdoğan drops 'insult' lawsuits against two children after apology
President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has dropped lawsuits against two children charged with “insulting” him on social media after they issued an apology. One of the children was also required to memorize the 10-stanza Turkish national anthem, whereas the other was required to memorize a poem consisting of 34 stanzas.
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President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has dropped lawsuits against two children charged with “insulting” him on social media after they issued an apology, state-run Anadolu Agency reported on Jan. 9.
The move came after the two children, who were not identified by name, applied to the chief public prosecutor's office of the eastern province of Van demanding a settlement.
Erdoğan's lawyer Hüseyin Aydın said that they will accept the settlement if one of the children memorizes the ten-stanza Turkish national anthem (“İstiklal Marşı” in Turkish) and the other memorizes the novelist and poet Nurullah Genç's poem titled “Yağmur” ('Rain' in English), which consists of 34 stanzas.
The children later went to the settlement department of the public prosecutor's office, fulfilling the lawyer's demand, as a result of which the cases against them were dropped.