Opposition lawmaker assaulted after Turkey’s interior minister targets him on Twitter
Turkish Workers’ Party member Baris Atay was attacked by a group of men when he exited a restaurant in Istanbul. The TiP reports that the "health condition of our comrade Barıs is good."
A Turkish opposition lawmaker filed a criminal complaint against Turkey’s powerful interior minister today after he was assaulted by unidentified men as he emerged from an Istanbul restaurant. Baris Atay, who was hospitalized for multiple injuries, said Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu had incited the attack through a threatening tweet. The affair is seen as a further dark page in Turkey’s descent into lawlessness and impunity.
Atay told Tele1 TV, a pro-opposition news channel, that one didn’t “need to be a soothsayer to grasp that the attack was linked to Soylu.” “It was a planned ambush,” he said. Eyewitnesses claimed one of the assailants had filmed the attack on his mobile phone while the rest laid into him before disappearing into separate directions.
