‘He would even risk releasing Öcalan for Erdoğan’

The CHP Deputy Chairmanship responsible for the Ministry of National Education organized an event titled "Rethinking Higher Education in the Light of Science and Democracy."

At the event held at the Eskişehir Metropolitan Municipality Art and Culture Palace, CHP Deputy Chairman Suat Özçağdaş, Eskişehir Metropolitan Mayor Ayşe Ünlüce, and CHP Eskişehir Provincial Chairman Talat Yalaz delivered opening speeches. Following them, CHP Chairman Özgür Özel spoke.

Özel expressed his views on MHP Chairman Devlet Bahçeli's support for the call he made to Abdullah Öcalan during his group meeting, and on the desire for a constitutional amendment to allow President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan to be elected for another term.

Özel's speech is as follows:

"A reality emerged yesterday with Mr. Bahçeli's statements. As you know, a bomb suddenly drops on the agenda. First, they said, 'Come, let's change the constitution.' We closed that door. Then they said, 'Israel will attack Turkey,' and we called for a closed session to address the agenda, saying, 'Tell us about it,' but they couldn't explain. We somehow saved Turkey from that agenda; otherwise, there was a media order inclined to compare the number of frigates of Israel and Turkey every evening, having received that instruction. They were trying to organize fear, not hope, and we prevented that. Now, an understanding that says, 'There is no Kurdish issue, but Turkey has a terror issue. To end it, someone must come, take the podium, make a speech, and all problems will end,' spilled the beans yesterday. He said, 'What if Abdullah Öcalan came, spoke, benefited from the right to hope, that is, was released, but at the same time the Constitution changed and Recep Tayyip Erdoğan became the president of this country again. There is no other option but him.' In other words, it seems Devlet Bahçeli could even risk releasing Abdullah Öcalan just to keep Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in power. All the issues experienced in Turkey are a democracy problem. That is, there is a perspective not for Turkey to be better, but for someone to protect their power. When that is the case, it is very clear that there is no sincerity there.

We have a sincerity here. We advocate that the people of Diyarbakır and Mardin use this right just as the people of Osmaniye and Rize use it, as much as the right of the people of Eskişehir to elect their own mayors and be governed by that mayor. When we do these things with a democratic perspective, regardless of which party they are elected from or which geography they are in, we will have overcome all our problems. In 2011, as a member of the CHP's Prison Commission, I was visiting both Mustafa Balbay and Haberal from the CHP, an elected deputy from the MHP, and four deputies elected from the BDP line of that day, today's DEM line, in the same Silivri Prison during the same visit. I was writing to the same report, and the same newspapers were reporting it, and we were able to do this without separating them as MHP and DEM. History said that those deputies were unjustly kept inside by the FETÖ plot and that we were right and the position Tayyip Bey took was wrong. No one knows how the powerful prosecutor of those days, Zekeriya Öz, left the country, but he fled like a rat. Now there are other prosecutors, and they are setting up new plots. They have only one goal: a bargain. The give-and-take in that bargain, the coercion for it, the blackmail for it, but they can go as far as appointing trustees to the CHP Mayor in Esenyurt and Ahmet Türk in Mardin.

"I DON'T KNOW HOW DEVLET BAHÇELİ WILL LOOK"

We are looking from a sincere place and we say that if an issue is to be discussed, the place is the Parliament. All political parties should take their places around the table. It should be open and transparent, and social consensus should be achieved. As the CHP, our most fundamental approach is that this issue must be solved through democratic means until no Kurd says, 'I do not feel like a second-class citizen.' But while this issue is being solved, our indispensable red line must be social consensus, and no solution should be produced that we cannot look into the eyes of the families of martyrs, martyrs' mothers, martyrs' children, martyrs' spouses, and our veterans. When you try to bring someone and suddenly put them on the parliamentary podium, I cannot look into those eyes. I don't know how Devlet Bahçeli will look.

"I WANT A COMMISSION ESTABLISHED IN PARLIAMENT TO LISTEN TO ALL PROBLEMS"

I want a commission established in Parliament to listen to all problems, to produce solutions to all problems through democratic means and legislative activities, for this to turn into a great project of brotherhood, and in the end, for both the funerals of martyrs and the tears of mothers to stop, and, if I may say so, we have spent one and a half trillion dollars on this fight against terror; today, one and a half trillion dollars is more than twice the size of the Turkish budget. So, leave the bones of that budget aside; when you create extra resources, when you look at the resources you would create in terms of welfare, the resources that could meet the current expectations of all retirees, all laborers, all farmers, all tradesmen, and all young people five times over have disappeared. I think it will be extremely important to preserve this resource in Turkey's future, to accumulate it in another aspect, and to spend it for the young people and beautiful people of this country.

News Source: 12punto