ISTANBUL—Turkey's Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan will drop all lawsuits he has lodged against private individuals, politicians and journalists for insulting him, a spokesman said Thursday.

Since taking office in 2003, Mr. Erdogan has made liberal use of a Turkish law that makes it a crime to insult a person's honor, punishable by up to two years in jail or a fine. Targets of his suits have included a stand-up comic who made an off-color joke about abortion; political opponents; a student theater troupe; and several cartoonists who caricatured the prime minister as various animals.

The spokesman for Mr. Erdogan said the decision to drop the suits was designed to boost a spirit of consensus and reconciliation after a rough election campaign, which ended Sunday in a sweeping victory for Mr. Erdogan and his ruling Justice and Development Party, or AKP.

The spokesman didn't give the number of ongoing lawsuits that would be dropped. The government hasn't given the total number of suits Mr. Erdogan has brought under article 125 of the penal code since 2005. That year, two years after he took office, it said he had brought 57 cases.

The AKP won one in every two votes in the country on Sunday. Mr. Erdogan has pledged to embrace those who voted against him and to seek consensus with his political opponents as he tries to rewrite the country's constitution.