Editor Ali Karahasanoğlu wrote on Thursday in Islamist newspaper Yeni Akit that one reason that left-wingers in Turkey opposed the death penalty was because so many of them would otherwise be given it for their crimes.

His opinion column was on the topic of Berna Laçin, a Turkish actress who is facing a year’s prison sentence for anti-Muslim hate speech for a tweet that said “if the death penalty were a solution, then records wouldn’t be broken for rape on the lands of Medina”.

Karahasanoğlu asked whether it was because so many leftists would be sentenced to death once the death penalty was brought in that they opposed the measure, or whether it was because they wanted only to be punished with life imprisonment, which would leave them with the chance of walking free after a few decades.

He then criticised the public prosecutor for only asking for Laçin to get a year’s prison sentence, saying that she and other “Berna Laçins” should get “the most severe punishment”, as that was the only language they understood.

Those who have been wrongly educated in a secular or foreign schooling environment may not see the contradiction between an Islamic city and immorality, but the more that young people are taught to recognise that they are inherently incompatible, the sooner that society will “be rid” of those like Berna Laçin, Karahasanoğlu said.

The death penalty had come back onto the agenda at the time of Laçin’s tweet due to two incidents of child rape and murder in a short period in Turkey. President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has said that if parliament presents him with a bill to legalise the death penalty he will sign off on it.