Successive criticisms of the CHP from Buğra Kavuncu! 'As long as you are the opposition...'

Preparations continue within the IYI Party for the decision to enter the local elections 'freely and independently'.

IYI Party IMM mayoral candidate Buğra Kavuncu made visits in Sultangazi as part of his election campaign.

"AS LONG AS YOU ARE THE OPPOSITION..."

Making statements after visiting local tradespeople, Kavuncu touched upon the alliance they had formed with the CHP and spoke as follows;

"We ended this alliance we had formed after the general elections. We said that we would now chart our own path, and from now on, the IYI Party will not take part in any alliance. Since the day we made this decision, we have been subjected to very unfair criticism. These esteemed individuals have forgotten that we are a separate party and that we have a separate legal personality. They think they are untouchable, indispensable, and beyond criticism. They want everyone to run around only for them, to work only for them, and for only them to be kept standing. There was almost a tutelary mindset, I remember it, in the 1990s. That tutelary mindset has almost resurfaced. Remember, a CHP deputy said, 'The opposition in Turkey is the CHP; everyone outside the CHP is just a garnish.' This is an indication of the mentality they possess. As long as you are the opposition, the change we desire in this country will not happen."

Stating that there are two parties responsible for the failure to achieve the desired standards in Turkey over the last 25 years, Kavuncu said, "One of them is the government, and the other is the main opposition. If elections are lost 5-6 times in a row, there are two possibilities; either the government is winning elections constantly because it is doing a very good job, which in our opinion it is not doing, or there is a problem, a trouble in the opposition. We think the latter is true."

Drawing attention to the alliance that was formed, Kavuncu made the following assessments:

"We formed a union thinking maybe it would improve, maybe it would be successful this time, but we saw that this did not bring about the result we desired, and we made a decision. The decision we have made is that we will field our own candidates in 81 provinces and nearly 1,000 districts and towns in Turkey. We want this to be respected. Of course, we will criticize the municipality that currently governs Istanbul. The reason we are candidates is the claim that something better can be done. Just because we formed an alliance in the past does not mean we will support these friends as long as they exist in politics. There is no such world. Those who make whatever decisions they want and carry out whatever changes they want in their own parties cannot tolerate it when we, as a separate party, make a different decision. This is what I mean by a tutelary mindset. It is the mindset that sees other parties as a garnish, except for themselves. We are a party that has raised a flag against this tutelary approach in both the opposition and the government. It is my most natural right to bring up the wrong things done in Istanbul to date so that Istanbul can be a better city. No one should be offended by this, and no one should be uncomfortable with it. We will call good things good and bad things bad."

Stating that they have been constantly in the field since the day they announced their candidacy, Kavuncu said they have 28 topics regarding Istanbul, ranging from transportation to urban transformation, and from stray animals to education.

Noting that in his speeches he has criticized both IMM President Ekrem İmamoğlu and the People's Alliance IMM mayoral candidate Murat Kurum, Kavuncu continued:

"We are not a party that cares about or strategizes around whether İmamoğlu loses, whether İmamoğlu wins, whether Murat Kurum loses, or whether Murat Kurum wins. There is only one result that will make us happy on the morning of April 1st: Hüseyin Öndeş winning the election in Sultangazi, and Buğra Kavuncu winning the election in Istanbul. If this result happens, we will be happy; if we cannot win, we will be unhappy. We will not be happy because so-and-so won, nor will we be happy because so-and-so lost. We want to present a new alternative, a new breath to our voters."