İYİ Party leadership candidate Mehmet Tolga Akalın makes 'Erdoğan' statement
İYİ Party leadership candidate Mehmet Tolga Akalın stated in his speech at the convention, "Today is the last day of the old Turkey, that is, the Tayyip Erdoğan administration. Today is the first day of our path to power. Of course, in this march, we are opening a new era shoulder to shoulder with Turkish patriots, Turkish democrats, and sincere conservatives."
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The highly anticipated 5th Extraordinary Convention of the İYİ Party has begun.
No spectators were admitted to the congress at the ATO Congresium in Ankara.
Koray Aydın, Müsavat Dervişoğlu, Mehmet Tolga Akalın, and Günay Kodaz are competing for the chairmanship.
Following Meral Akşener and Müsavat Dervişoğlu, Mehmet Tolga Akalın took the podium.
Highlights from Akalın's speech are as follows;
"Today is the last day of the old Turkey, that is, the Tayyip Erdoğan administration. Today is the first day of our path to power. Of course, in this march, we are opening a new era shoulder to shoulder with Turkish patriots, Turkish democrats, and sincere conservatives. We are a political party founded against the most tyrannical government in Turkish political history, at the time when it was at its most tyrannical.
What did we want from the MHP? First, we wanted a transition from security-oriented, statist nationalism to democratic nationalism. Second, we determined that one cannot walk the path with a political movement that has lost its goal of power, and in this context, we started a march.
Erdoğan is not a knight, he is not a hero. Erdoğan is an ambusher. Erdoğan cannot fight his rivals bravely. Erdoğan can only maintain his power by setting ambushes for his opponents. The only political movement that Erdoğan could not finish has been this movement of the good and the brave. The İYİ Party is a political movement founded in the reasonable center of Turkey, and its founding principles are extraordinary. I find it correct for the İYİ Party to define itself as nationalist, democratic, and developmentalist.
REACTION TO 'CONVENTION WITHOUT SPECTATORS'
A political movement that started with 100 thousand people should not have held a convention with 3 thousand people today.
"YOU NEED TO SEND A MESSAGE ON 3 ISSUES"
You need to send a message to the voters on 3 issues. You need to send a message in the areas of security, freedoms and law, and thirdly, prosperity. The nationalism of the İYİ Party corresponds to the security needs of politics and voters, the democratic nature of the İYİ Party corresponds to the freedoms and law needs of politics and voters, and the developmentalism of the İYİ Party corresponds to the prosperity needs of politics and voters.
Nationalism and democracy are indispensable to each other. Security and democracy are not contradictory, but complementary to each other. We need to internalize nationalism and democracy and build democratic nationalism."