CHP responds to Mehmet Uçum's remarks on Erdoğan's candidacy: 'There is no further need'

Chief Advisor to the President Mehmet Uçum had argued that AKP Chairman and President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan could run for office once more, stating: "According to the Constitution, if the Parliament decides to renew elections during the President's second term, the President may run for office one more time (Constitution Art. 116/3). This state of candidacy is an exception to the two-term rule. For this reason, it is called 'exceptional candidacy'."

CHP Spokesperson Deniz Yücel responded to Mehmet Uçum's words in a statement following the CHP MYK meeting. Yücel's statements are as follows:

"THE ONLY CONCERN AND WORRY OF THE AKP GOVERNMENT..."

"In this country, babies are being killed for money, for rent. Children are being killed in this country. Five innocent little ones lose their lives in a fire while their mothers are out collecting paper to provide for the household. Young girls are brutally murdered in the middle of the street. Femicides are increasing day by day.

In this country, where occupational health and safety are disregarded, workers lose their lives in workplace homicides that are entirely foreseeable and preventable.

Our retirees, who have to work to make ends meet even after retiring, are trying to hold onto life with their meager pensions. Millions of workers earning a minimum wage that remains below the hunger threshold are struggling to survive. Our citizens can no longer lift their heads from debt. Living in the Turkey of the AKP, which has been governing the country alone for 22 years, has become a torment.

In this country, where inequality in income distribution is rapidly deepening, poverty is increasing every day, and thousands of our citizens are trying to boil a pot by collecting leftovers from markets, the only concern and worry of the AKP government is to get Tayyip Erdoğan elected President once again.

"THERE IS NO FURTHER NEED FOR ERDOĞAN'S COMPETENCE"

As if the country has no problems left; as if the economic crisis, cost of living, social violence, newborn baby deaths, femicides, workplace homicides, unemployment, and the refugee problem were not making society groan in pain, or as if these problems were happening in another country, their only concern instead of finding solutions to these problems is to get Tayyip Erdoğan elected once again. What is it? 'In times when leadership experience and competence are needed more, the president can run for office one more time under the name of exceptional candidacy.'

Look, I am addressing the friend who says this: This nation has no further need for Tayyip Erdoğan's leadership experience and competence. In the 2023 Presidential elections, 48 percent of this nation declared that they did not want Tayyip Erdoğan and showed him a yellow card.

In the March 31, 2024 local elections, they showed a yellow card to the AKP and Mr. Erdoğan for the second time, making them the second party. The end of the second yellow card is actually a red card and being out of the game. That process has begun. Both the AKP and Erdoğan will be out of the game in the first election, when the ballot box arrives.

"THEY ARE TARGETING THE CHP"

Sensing this danger, the AKP government has dropped everything and is targeting the CHP and CHP-run municipalities. Their first act immediately after the March 31 local elections was to make a regulation to collect the municipalities' social security (SGK) and tax debts directly from the source from Iller Bank revenues.

The AKP, which for years did not compromise on luxury and ostentation by saying 'There is no saving from reputation' and transferring all the government's resources to its own supporters; as a second step, invented a nonsense called 'Austerity Measures' and tried to load the burden of austerity onto the backs of workers, laborers, and civil servants. Then, they removed elected mayors from office with baseless allegations and fabricated evidence. They usurped the will of the people by seizing municipalities with the trustees they appointed in their place. 

Starting with our Esenyurt Mayor Mr. Ahmet Özer and our Ovacık Mayor Mustafa Sarıgül; they removed mayors from office in Mardin, Batman, Halfeti, Tunceli, and Van Bahçesaray—who were approved to run by the Supreme Election Council (YSK) and were elected and took office with the votes of the people—and appointed trustees in their place. Then, with a Presidential Decree published last week, they made a regulation regarding the deduction of municipal companies' SGK and tax debts at the source. It didn't stop there; they lost themselves to the point of attempting to close the daycare centers opened by CHP municipalities with an instruction letter from the Ministry of National Education (MEB), just because they were opened by CHP municipalities."