Main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) deputy Aykut Erdoğdu shared a video on his Twitter account showing a man calling for the establishment of a caliphate in Turkey from a vehicle that bears the logo of the Üsküdar Municipality.
In the call made from a van belonging to the ruling Justice and Development party (AKP) municipality, references were made to the Quran and its verses. The man calling for a caliphate said that “salvation lies only in Islam,” targeting “infidels, imperialists and Zionists.”
CHP deputy Erdoğdu, who shared the video, called the incident a “crime against the constitution.”
The last official caliphate was headed by an Ottoman sultan until it was officially abolished in 1924. Modern Turkey’s founder, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, eliminated this religious leadership institution after the declaration of the republic in 1923.