President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan made statements regarding the corruption operations targeting the Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality (IMM) during his speech at the "Istanbul with Every Neighborhood" program held at the Istanbul Congress Center. Erdoğan said, "It is being confessed by their own associates who the organization has put on the payroll, who it has extorted, and who it has bribed. Former accomplices are talking about money carried in suitcases and the mafia order established in Istanbul. Instead of coming out and apologizing to the nation, they are brazenly threatening prosecutors, judges, and members of the police and media who are doing their jobs every day."
Emphasizing that the AKP cadres are a team that "shares a path and destiny not just until the ballot box, but until the last breath," Erdoğan stated, "Our companions are those who have no one but God. We are a movement that set out to be the voice of the voiceless."
Criticizing the opposition, Erdoğan said, "If you do not listen to the nation and do not produce solutions to the people's problems, you are not populist; you are either rent-seekers or tape-seekers. We all know what state the rent-seekers and tape-seekers have fallen into, and especially what state they have reduced Istanbul to."
Erdoğan added, "Fascism has reached such a point that they have no tolerance for anyone other than themselves. They try to intimidate everyone who does not think or act like them, even if they are members of an opposition party, through bullying. Our nation did not bring us to these positions to turn a blind eye to banditry. On the contrary, they entrusted us with this duty so that we would not let their rights, laws, interests, and honor be trampled upon, and to ensure the safety of their lives and property."
News Source: 12punto
