Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said on Monday there are no efforts to establish a new Turkish state and that he is not its founder, refuting claims by a ruling party member who said “a new Turkish state is being founded and Erdoğan is its founder.”
Addressing a crowd in Rize province on Monday, Erdoğan said: “This is our manifesto: one homeland, one nation, one state and one flag. I am telling you my manifesto as party chairman and president. We have no other state than Turkey, no matter what they say. It’s all fiction. God willing, we are in efforts to make our Turkish state stronger, and we will succeed in it.”
During a program aired by CNN Türk on Thursday evening, Ayhan Oğan, a member of the Central Decision and Administration Board (MKYK) of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), said: “Now we are founding a new state. Like it or not, the founding leader of this new state is Tayyip Erdoğan.”
Debates over the regime in Turkey have been on the agenda since constitutional amendments bringing an executive presidency were approved in a referendum on April 16.
A ruling AKP deputy, Metin Külünk, said on Jan. 13 that the switch in Turkey to a presidential system would disable the “bureaucratic oligarchy” in the country and take revenge for the last 200 years.
Claiming the Republic of Turkey had come to an end, another AKP deputy, Tülay Babuşçu, said in 2015 that the” 90-year-long commercial break of a 600-year-old empire is now over.”