Özgür Özel points to Mahmoud Abbas regarding the Palestine issue

Touching upon the Palestine issue in his statement, Özel said, "The Palestine issue is not a new issue for the Republican People's Party. The solidarity shown by Bülent Ecevit with the leader of the Palestine Liberation Organization, Yasser Arafat, during his time as Prime Minister and as party leader, is in all of our memories. 

On one hand, the Chairman of the Justice and Development Party says, 'Sir, Özgür Özel calls the attacks carried out by Hamas a terrorist attack,' because we condemned the attack when Hamas attacked innocent Israelis one night.

Whoever does it, attacking innocent people in the middle of the night is a terrorist attack. What Hamas did is a terrorist act, and what Israel has done since then is state terrorism. These are acts amounting to genocide, and I condemn both," he said.

"I WILL MEET WITH MAHMOUD ABBAS IN RAMALLAH"

Stating that he will visit Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah on April 15, provided there is no change in his schedule, Özel said, "I will not meet with Hamas, but I will meet with Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah.

We advocate and will continue to advocate for the Palestine issue, for peace to come to Palestine, for the re-establishment of an independent State of Palestine within the 1969 borders, for East Jerusalem to be its capital, and for Jerusalem to be placed under United Nations protection as a city of peace in a manner appropriate to its status for all holy religions," he said.

"We will continue with a clean political language," said Özel, adding, "We will not fight with them just because someone wants us to. We will not feed the climate of polarization by fighting just to win an election. Of course, we will have a fight with the government, but this fight will not be over identity politics; it will be for the rights of retirees, the rights of laborers, and the rights of the youth," he stated.

Özel said, "Let us know that when this government came to power, if the pension, which was 1.5 times the minimum wage, had remained there, it would be 26 thousand liras today. Today it is 0.6. There is no AK Party supporter or CHP supporter in this. After receiving a salary of 10 thousand liras, it does not matter which party you are from, what you do, or what you have done. There is deep poverty, there is hunger, there is the inability to pay natural gas bills, the inability to go to the market, the inability to pass by the butcher, and the inability to go to the dairy," he said.

News Source: İHA