Nicosia, Cyprus. A case against four left-wing activists accused of conspiring to vandalise posters declaring love for Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has been dropped, more than five years after the posters were vandalised.
The posters, commissioned by Erdogan’s AK Party’s Famagusta youth branch, had appeared around the north in March 2021.
Posters and vandalism report
The posters read ‘Love Erdogan’ and were displayed in response to a billboard in New York reading ‘Stop Erdogan’. They had been commissioned and paid for by Erdogan’s AK Party’s Famagusta youth branch.
One of the posters was defaced with the word ‘Diablo’, and the youth branch reported the vandalism to the police.
Reactions after the case was dropped
After the case was dropped, one of the accused, Abdullah Korkmazhan, said “the prosecutor’s office withdrew the fabricated case” and added that “we have made the applications to get back our phones which were stolen five years ago”.
Korkmazhan also referred to the fact that in 2024, two of the four were accused of having “conspired” to deface the posters without having physically gone to the scene.
Defence response
The four’s defence lawyer Mine Atli said that “if the prosecution started opening cases based on this logic, the list of defendants would be very much longer indeed”.
What do you think the case being dropped means for how similar allegations will be pursued in the future?
