Özgür Özel in Beylikdüzü: I am addressing Erdoğan, you said 'the biggest radish is yet to come,' it turned out to be a big lie

Republican People's Party (CHP) Chairman Özgür Özel attended the Beylikdüzü Blessed Iftar Table program organized by the Beylikdüzü Municipality.

Here is Özgür Özel's speech at the event:

“Very precious residents of Beylikdüzü, dear neighbors of the İmamoğlu family and the Çalık family, dear neighbors and companions of our Mayor Murat Çalık, who will leave very important marks on the future political history of the Republic of Turkey and will provide services far beyond what has been done to date, and our Presidential candidate Ekrem İmamoğlu. I greet you all with respect.

This table is the table of Beylikdüzü, a table set by Mayor Ekrem and Mayor Murat, shared with you, and where they have broken their fasts with you for 10 years on the nights of Laylat al-Qadr, which is more blessed than a thousand months.

Being together with you in this blessed month of Ramadan, on the most precious night of Ramadan, and being here in their place is a great happiness for me, but at the same time, it is of course a pain that wrings my heart. We feel sadness and grief as much as we feel happiness.”

“THEY WERE SEPARATED FROM THEIR FAMILIES AND THEIR DUTIES”

“In these blessed days, those who strike a blow to democracy, who lock up the people's elected mayors and valuable bureaucrats as they see fit, who remove them from their paths, and who think they will prevent them from being rivals, have torn away from us and from you those we elected and those we love. They may physically take them from here today and put them in Silivri. However, they cannot tear the love for both of them away from their families, from Beylikdüzü, or from Istanbul.

Surah An-Nisa, verse 58; ‘Indeed, Allah commands you to render trusts to whom they are due and when you judge between people to judge with justice.’ Perhaps on this blessed night, after this last week we have experienced, it would not be possible to better understand how clean the situation we are in today is for us, how pure the feelings are, and how malicious the structure in front of us is, than by reading this verse.

The people of Beylikdüzü are witnesses, the people of Istanbul are witnesses that the trust of Istanbul was in competent hands; the trust of Beylikdüzü was in competent hands. However, they were not treated with justice. They were subjected to injustice and lawlessness, separated from their families, separated from their nation, separated from their duties, and separated from their loved ones.

We just listened to the voice of our Mayor Mehmet Murat Çalık, the son of Beylikdüzü who performs his service to Beylikdüzü like a passion, like an act of worship. Once again, we greet him with longing and gratitude. On the other hand, we embrace with longing and love our Presidential candidate, your dear son, brother, and neighbor Ekrem İmamoğlu, whom 15 million 500 thousand of our citizens showed solidarity with, signed for, and declared with their ballots by going to the polls where they were called without being forced or officially required, in a way that will go down in world political history as the greatest mobilization in the history of Turkish politics.”

“I AM PRAYING FOR THE CHILDREN OF OUR NATION ON THIS BLESSED NIGHT”

“When I met with him yesterday afternoon, when I thought about having iftar in Beylikdüzü this evening with my Mayor Murat Çalık's family, with Zehra Hanım, his mother, his father, Dilek Hanım, Uncle Hasan, and Mayor Ekrem's dear mother, that Ekrem Mayor you know held my hand with both of his hands from across the table.

He looked into my eyes. I felt that he was conveying the light and love in his eyes to you through my eyes. Hearing that I would be here, holding my hand and looking at you through my eyes, he said the following while looking into your eyes: ‘I will pray that the blessed month of Ramadan will lead to good things with your prayers and worship.

We are on the night of Laylat al-Qadr. On this blessed night, I am praying for the children of our nation. I am praying for our abundance, our peace, our successes, our brotherhood, our future, our children, and our youth. I am praying for peace and a very beautiful life. I am praying for the immediate release of our detained youth. May Almighty Allah protect our nation and our state from unjust, heartless, and evil administrators. May your Laylat al-Qadr be blessed.’ Ekrem İmamoğlu, Mayor of Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality, Presidential Candidate of the Republic of Turkey.”

“THEY WERE CORNERED WHEN CAUGHT RED-HANDED”

“One of the hundreds of young people that Mayor Ekrem mentioned and prayed for is my brother Berkay, who ran after that bus again and again, saying ‘Mayor Ekrem, Mayor Ekrem,’ stopped the bus, and turned there to say, ‘Everything will be very beautiful, Brother Ekrem.’ Those who put Berkay, the name of our hope for the future who said ‘Everything will be very beautiful’ with Ekrem İmamoğlu, into the same dungeons in Silivri today are those who are blocking Turkey's path.

But they will not succeed. I do not speak for very long at iftar tables. However, we are at a critical stage for both Mayor Ekrem and many people who are unjustly held inside. There is such lawlessness that the prosecutor of the coup and conspiracy investigation against İmamoğlu has been cornered into a desperate place.

He had raised the perception very high. He mentioned the MASAK report. It is empty. It is a report that they could not find anyone to sign, so they had an assistant expert sign it, who also used sentences that did not take responsibility, which proved nothing, and all the movements of which were explained by the lawyers of Mayor Ekrem, Mayor Murat, Resul Emrah Şahan, and our other friends. For example, when asked ‘What is this money?’ and told ‘It is this,’ they said ‘Pardon’ and were convinced. The MASAK report is empty, there is no evidence, the only thing on hand is the statements of secret witnesses full of contradictory statements, and when they were caught red-handed in their slanders—for example, even for the company closest to Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, which had nothing to do with Mayor Ekrem, it was on the list given to him—they were cornered.”

“THERE ARE EFFORTS TO FORCE FALSE TESTIMONY”

“What are they doing now? We complain to all of Turkey, to all television channels, to all honest journalists, to everyone who has even a tiny bit of mercy left in their conscience, whether they are involved in politics in the AK Party or the MHP, to the conscience of everyone in Turkey, that there is no crime, there is no evidence on hand, and the desperation is great.

Now, to cover up this disgrace, to be able to fill the file now, we are facing a prosecutor who is looking for new secret witnesses, fake confessors, and people to slander. They are calling people whom Ekrem İmamoğlu knew from Beylikdüzü 10-15 years ago, his neighbors, to the prosecutor's office and forcing them to testify.

‘Did you do business, did you have any transactions in the past, did you give anything in return? Did he or his circle ask you for anything during his mayoralty? He must have. I know there was. If you don't confess, I will put you inside for perjury,’ there are fake, intimidating efforts to force false testimony.

On the other hand, they call female detainees in prison via SEGBİS connection and say, ‘If you have anything to tell me, this is your last chance. Otherwise, I won't listen to you again. You won't be able to see your children's faces for years, maybe 10 years,’ forcing female detainees who have 3-4-year-old children, and then they send someone to them. They make them say, ‘The prosecutor was angry, but if you say something like he said, if you are ready, we will say it again. He will listen to you. You will get out of here and go tomorrow.’”

“JUSTICE CANNOT BE WON WITH THREATS AND BLACKMAIL”

“Now I am addressing Erdoğan. You said ‘the biggest radish is yet to come,’ it turned out to be a big lie. You said ‘you won't be able to look your families in the face,’ the families are here. We are looking each other in the face. They are looking at the face of all of Beylikdüzü. However, your prosecutor has no face left to show in public.

Now you are talking about new radishes. Is this how you look for the biggest radish? Justice cannot be won by threatening, slandering, blackmailing, and offering cooperation by saying ‘If he lies’ to find a radish. In this blessed Ramadan, on this blessed night of Laylat al-Qadr, we are once again addressing everyone who believes, who has faith in their conscience, who has fairness. They did a shameful thing, they did a pity, they are trying to ruin the future of a world of young people, our Mayor Ekrem, and his team around him for a political ambition.

But they do not speak a word less, they do not throw these slanders at each other, they do not say anything about each other that they do not know. They do not deviate from the truth. They cling to the truth. They believe in Allah and in themselves. And we vouch for their honor as much as we vouch for our own. Today, under these conditions, Erdoğan went to a group meeting and repeated a world of lies. He turned and turned and said the same lies.

They do not have a single piece of evidence to prove these lies. But on the other hand, because we stand behind them, because you stand behind them, because their neighbors and fellow citizens stand behind them, because millions were in Saraçhane for seven nights throughout the week in Istanbul, tens of millions in Turkey, and 15 million people were in the square, in the democracy square on March 23, they can no longer bear this unity.”

“THERE IS NO DISCOURSE OVER DEATH EVEN IN WAR”

“Today, they lied that those who went there destroyed the graves and tombstones in the Şehzadebaşı Mosque, an early period work of Mimar Sinan. The remedy, as it used to be, remained as desperate as mosque lies to defend itself. We went immediately and saw that two stones had fallen, and they had been removed before the Governor arrived the next morning. Mayor Ekrem has been begging for four years to let me restore the graveyard there to its best state. They both did not give the signature and are trying to create a perception with the lie that the protesters are breaking the stones there.

He also said to me, ‘Özgür Efendi, your grave will also be dug soon, it is not clear who will dig it and who will take it.’ He could have not done this and sent a bullet like the mafia, or there could have been other threats. If 1% of this remark were said to Erdoğan, they would turn the place upside down. They don't say what is the place of a grave in politics, what is the place of death in politics? Even in war, the war is stopped, the parties go and take their dead. They are buried according to their faith, and then they return to the war again.

Even in war, there is no politics or discourse over corpses, over remains, over blessed funerals, over graves, or tombs. Even in war, everything happens, but graves are not touched. Despite such an understanding, in the face of such madness, it is up to us, to all of us, to embrace each other, to stand shoulder to shoulder, and to never, ever be afraid of this evil.

We are not people of palaces, mansions, or monuments, but honest people who have not let a single bite of forbidden food pass through their throats, and who will live like this until the end of their lives, will lie in modest graves, but will leave honor and dignity as a legacy to their children.”

“THE NATION IS ON ITS FEET, BESIDE ITS MAYORS”

“The proxy of Ekrem İmamoğlu and the proxy of Murat Çalık are with our two valuable brothers we elected from our municipal councils. The trust is on their behalf, both to them and to all of us. Their families and children are of course entrusted to all of us. But the trust we received from both of them is resistance, struggle, not forgetting them, and the struggle to regain their freedom as soon as possible. I greet you all with respect from here, and while celebrating your Laylat al-Qadr, your blessed Laylat al-Qadr once again, I expect you to convey the strongest support to your two brave sons, your fellow citizens, those two beautiful people, Murat Çalık and Ekrem İmamoğlu, and to make your heartfelt applause heard all the way to Silivri. Both of them are our honor, we are protecting our honor, we are protecting our will. Hear this, Erdoğan, this is the nation, this is the people. The nation is on its feet, beside its mayors. I greet you all with respect, thank you, long live.”