Kemal Kilicdaroglu, the leader of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) criticised Erdogan on the occasion of January 10 Working Journalists Day in Turkey for targeting an opposition daily newspaper. “If, in 2020, a country’s so-called president is directly targeting a newspaper and telling people, ‘I am not reading that newspaper, you should also not buy and read it,’ then think about the tutelage and oppression on the media there” said Kilicdaroglu.
Erdogan has strongly reacted to the “so-called president” description and filed a court complaint against Kilicdaroglu over his remarks.
As a matter of fact Erdogan himself is fond of the “so called” expression and never hesitates to use it. For example he spoke of the peace academics in the country as “so-called intellectuals” or has used the phrase “the so-called advocates of justice” when referring to the five permanent members of the UN Security Council. Recently he even said that the rights of the jailed Kurdish opposition leader are “so called”: “We are not going to protect the so-called rights of a terrorist like Demirtas.”
Erdogan’s list of his usage of the term “so called” goes on and on and with his latest reaction – when it was applied to himself – shows that he deems the phrase an insult.