İYİ Party IMM Group Deputy Chair İbrahim Özkan resigns! A 'free and independent' jab

İYİ Party IMM Group Deputy Chair İbrahim Özkan has resigned from the İYİ Party.

Özkan had previously made a post criticizing the GİK decision, after which his resignation was requested.

After resigning from his position as Group Deputy Chair and being re-elected, Özkan and the 7 İYİ Party members who voted for him were referred to the disciplinary board with a request for permanent expulsion. 

In a post on his X account, Özkan announced that he and 6 other İYİ Party members have resigned, stating the following:

"WE DO NOT WISH TO CONTRIBUTE FURTHER TO THIS PROCESS"

"The İYİ Party General Administrative Board, which met on December 4, 2023, decided to enter the 2024 local elections with its own candidates. The need for a third option was cited as the justification for the 'free and independent' decision. 

While we respect this decision, we expressed our view that cooperation should continue in Istanbul and Ankara. Because in the 2019 local elections,

Istanbul and Ankara were won after 25 years. This was a significant motivation for both the opposition and the public who voted for us.

Principled politics requires being consistent in word and deed, and being sincere and open-minded. If your rhetoric and actions do not inspire trust, we cannot speak of principled politics there. Calling people whom we nominated as presidential candidates just a year ago 'incapable of managing municipalities' today does not befit principled politics and does not inspire trust in the nation.

We have always stood by the interests of our country and our nation. We stood against a system that wants to condemn our country to one-man rule. We do not wish to contribute further to this process, where democracy does not function healthily and where even social media posts are pushed to be made collectively, and where the losses could lead to constitutional changes.

THEY WILL CONTINUE AS INDEPENDENTS

For the interests of our country, for our Istanbul, the heart of Turkey, we are signing a joint decision and resigning from the İYİ Party as 'free and independent.'

We respectfully announce to the public that we have concluded this process, which left us no other choice but to resign, and that we will continue our path in the IMM Assembly as independents from now on.

Bora Kılıç, İbrahim Özkan, Oğuz Sarul, Sinan Gümüş, Uluer Kaya, Yakup Fındık