Republican People’s Party (CHP) Deputy Chairperson Veli Ağbaba has said President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and the Justice and Development Party (AKP) government have become a national security problem for Turkey.
“And Turkey should definitely be saved from this,” he said at a news conference following a party workshop in the southeastern province of Diyarbakır on Monday.
Ağbaba’s remarks came in response to statements from AKP Secretary-General Abdülhamit Gül, who said CHP leader Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu has become a national security problem because party members attended a rally with “supporters of terrorism.”
Gül, who was addressing fellow party members in Gaziantep, criticized the attendance of CHP members at a rally in Kartal in mid-November protesting the arrest of 10 Kurdish deputies from Parliament. The AKP secretary-general accused Kılıçdaroğlu of doing politics just like the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), which is the third largest party in the legislature.
According to Gül, the CHP, which was established by the founder of modern Turkey, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, has turned into a political party that supports those who say they receive the backing of “terrorists,” in reference to arrested HDP Co-chair Figen Yüksekdağ’s remarks about Syrian Kurdish fighters.