Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan lashed out at the New York Times, calling it a "shameless" news organization and ordering its reporters to "know your place," according to regional reports on the leader’s remarks.
Erdogan was responding to May 22 editorial in the Times criticizing Turkey for cracking down on reporters and critics ahead of a key parliamentary election in the country.
Erdogan and his AKP party have a history of using strong-arm tactics to intimidate critics and clamp down on negative media scrutiny.
Erdogan, who has been named by President Barack Obama as one of his top five regional friends, accused the Times of "overstepping the limits of freedom" and of being a "shameless" newspaper.
"As a newspaper, you [the New York Times] should know your place. You are meddling in Turkey's affairs by writing something like this. By publishing this editorial, you are overstepping the limits of freedom," Erdogan was quoted as saying on Monday during remarks presented at a think tank in Istanbul.
"Can you write such a thing against the U.S. administration?" he added, according to Middle East Eye. "If you do, [the government] would immediately do what is necessary."
In its editorial, the Times accused Erdogan and his colleagues of hindering free speech in the Turkish media.
"Mr. Erdogan has a long history of intimidating and co-opting the Turkish media, but new alarms were set off this week when criminal complaints were filed against editors of the Hurriyet Daily News and its website over a headline Mr. Erdogan had objected to," the Times wrote. "Referring to the verdict in the case of Mohamed Morsi, the deposed president of Egypt, it read: ‘The world is shocked! Death sentence for president who received 52 percent of the vote.’"
The paper went on to describe Erdogan’s behavior as "a slap at the idea that Turkey is still a democracy."