‘No one can slander Turkey’

DOHA: Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said on Wednesday no one had the right to "slander" Turkey by accusing it of buying oil from Islamic State, and that he would stand down if such allegations were proven to be true.
Erdogan, who was speaking at a university in Qatar´s capital Doha, said he did not want relations with Moscow to worsen further.
"Nobody has the right to slander Turkey by saying Turkey is buying Daesh oil," he said, using an Arabic acronym for Islamic State.
Russia´s defence ministry said it had proof that Erdogan and his family were benefiting from the illegal smuggling of oil from Islamic State-held territory in Syria and Iraq.
Government officials described the claims as baseless, while a senior official from the ruling AK Party founded by Erdogan said they were part of a narrative being spun for a Russian domestic audience.
Relations between the two hit their worst in recent memory after Turkey downed a Russian jet near the Syrian border last week, prompting Moscow to impose a raft of sanctions on Ankara.
Meanwhile, a Turkish court has asked experts to determine whether the "Lord of the Rings" character Gollum is good or evil to decide whether a doctor insulted Turkey´s President Tayyip Erdogan, the defendant´s lawyer told Reuters on Wednesday.
Erdogan´s lawyers are sueing Bilgin Ciftci, a physician from the western city of Aydin, after he shared pictures on social media of the president juxtaposed with those of the "small, slimy creature" immortalised in J.R.R. Tolkien´s fantasy novels.
"The prosecutor didn´t watch the movie and he defined Gollum as ´the monster in a bad role´. But we said Gollum can´t be defined as evil.
The character itself is a war between good and bad.
He is basically seen as a victim of society," said Ciftci´s lawyer, Hicran Danisman.
"The judge said he was familiar with the movie but he couldn´t decide whether Gollum was good or bad," she said. The experts who must decide the issue include a cinema specialist, a behavioural scientist and a psychologist, Danisman added. Gollum appears in Tolkien´s tale "The Hobbit" and in his "Lord of the Rings" trilogy, which have both been turned into blockbuster movies.