, has announced that he will have a face-to-face meeting with President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in the coming days, the ANKA news agency reported on Wednesday.){kind=link}
Özgür Özel, the leader of Turkey’s main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), has announced that he will have a face-to-face meeting with President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in the coming days, the ANKA news agency reported on Wednesday.
Özel on Wednesday visited Strasbourg, upon an invitation by Frank Schwabe, chairperson of the Socialists, Democrats and Greens (SOC) Group at the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE).
Following his address to the SOC Group during the PACE session, he had a series of meetings, one of which was with the Turkish delegation to PACE.
According to ANKA, Özel said the CHP represents Turkey abroad as the main opposition party of the country since it came in first in the local elections on March 31. He also said that, as a result, they are obliged to collaborate with Erdoğan’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) to safeguard the rights and interests of the country.
“In the coming period, we will also have a face-to-face meeting with Mr. Erdoğan. … Until 20 years ago, when leaders requested it … they would be briefed by the Foreign Affairs Ministry and upon their return [from abroad], they would report their visits to the ministry. We need to quickly bring this back to the Republic of Turkey,” the CHP leader added.
Özel initially expressed his desire to meet with Erdoğan in a statement that followed the historic success of his party in the March local elections.
During a press briefing after a cabinet meeting on Tuesday, Erdoğan responded to the main opposition leader’s offer, saying that Özel is welcome to visit him as they have “many topics to discuss.”
Erdoğan’s ruling AKP suffered its worst election defeat since coming to power two decades ago in the March local elections. While Özel’s CHP emerged as the leading party for the first time in 47 years, securing 37.7 percent of the vote and maintaining control of key cities and securing substantial gains in other regions, the AKP, for the first time in 22 years, stood as the second party, garnering only 35.4 percent of the vote.