Republican People’s Party (CHP) Chairman Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu has said his telephone is wiretapped and that the recordings are sent to President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, the Hürriyet daily reported on Monday.
“My telephone and those of party administrators have been wiretapped since I became chairman [in 2010]. All the tapes are sent to one person [President Erdoğan]. Erdoğan had once said, ‘Oh Kılıçdaroğlu, we’re even monitoring your breathing’,” Kılıçdaroğlu told a group of journalists on a flight back from Çanakkale.
Underlining that ‘Turkey has turned into an intelligence state’, Kılıçdaroğlu said, “Turkey has become a state where all the intelligence services work for Erdoğan.”
Claiming that the wiretapping is the result of an inability to run the country and worrying only about his own future, the CHP leader said Erdoğan also wiretaps the phone of Felicity Party (SP) leader Temel Karamollaoğlu.
“Mr. Temel had been discussing this. They were planning a rally to support Palestine. His telephones were wiretapped, and a report of the plan was sent to [Erdoğan during his visit to the UK]. His aides told him, ‘Sir, the opposition will hold a rally.’ [Erdoğan] made a statement there [in London]: ‘We are going to hold a rally.’ Can you believe it?” said Kılıçdaroğlu.
“If we’re worried even when we’re talking on the phone, it means there’s no democracy in the country.”