Tanju Özcan to President Erdoğan: You cannot call Atatürk just 'Gazi', and you cannot call me a 'person' to belittle me
AKP Chairman and President Erdoğan spoke at his party's 8th Ordinary Provincial Congress in Denizli. In his speech, Erdoğan criticized Bolu Mayor Tanju Özcan without naming him, and asked CHP Chairman Özgür Özel why he had not held Özcan accountable. Bolu Mayor Tanju Özcan responded to President Erdoğan via his social media account.
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At the AKP's 8th Ordinary Provincial Congress in Denizli, Erdoğan criticized Tanju Özcan—who admitted to acting unlawfully against Syrians on Fatih Altaylı's YouTube program—without mentioning him by name.
Tanju Özcan had made the following statement on the program he attended:
They receive enough aid from the state, I said I would not provide a single penny of aid from the Bolu Municipality budget. I removed the signs in one night, and I canceled their licenses unlawfully. Of course, with the power and momentum at that time, they couldn't even file a lawsuit. There is not a single Arabic sign in Bolu right now.
ERDOĞAN CRITICIZED WITHOUT NAMING HIM
AKP Chairman and President Erdoğan said the following about Tanju Özcan at the congress without naming him:
Will you have any statement or condemnation regarding the person who openly admits on screens that he committed racism and violated the law, Mr. Özel? These are questions that Mr. Özel and the CHP administration cannot answer. When it comes to talk, they say we are the party founded by Atatürk, yet they do not know the struggle that the veteran, who spent one-third of his life on the battlefields, waged in the Middle East and North Africa.
TANJU ÖZCAN RESPONDED
Tanju Özcan responded to President Erdoğan's remarks about him on his social media account. Özcan stated the following:
Mr. Erdoğan;
You cannot just call Atatürk “Gazi”; at the very least, you will address him as Gazi Mustafa Kemal Atatürk.
I am the Mayor of Bolu of the Republic of Turkey, elected with higher percentages than you. You cannot call me a “person” to belittle me.
I am not a racist! I am a TURKISH NATIONALIST who thinks of the survival of the Turkish Nation and says no to the refugee invasion.
As for you, you are the AKP Chairman who, together with imperial powers, turned the country into a refugee dump, and a President who can never embrace all 85 million.
I will continue to prioritize the rights and laws of the Turkish Nation over those of the refugees.