Is CHP leader Özgür Özel the reason for the investigation into the lieutenants? 'It is between Mr. Tayyip and me'

Meeting with journalists in Ankara, Özgür Özel answered reporters' questions regarding the agenda.

According to a report by Ceren Bayar from Gazete Duvar, Özel reiterated his call for early elections, saying, "Erdoğan imposed this on Turkey: 'Whoever wins the last election holds the golden belt. He is the big brother of the neighborhood.'”

With all due respect, we won the last election, so we have the golden belt. We say let's cash in this golden belt and share it with the nation. We have no intention of giving it back to Mr. Tayyip," he said.

Evaluating the discussions of division within the party, Özel said, “There is a mind trying to make it look like there is a center of gravity in the party that does not actually exist. That mind is not in the party. It is outside the party, from the palace. There are some friends who are being used as tools for this.”

Highlights from Özel's statements are as follows:

Question: The decision regarding the lieutenants is expected to be made within a month. Expulsion does not seem like it will be a surprise. What kind of path will you follow in this case?

Özel: I think they should not be expelled. I am truly very saddened that this issue is being done solely to be used as a tool for Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's politics of polarization, and that the excitement of innocent people, young lieutenants, especially Ebru Eroğlu who graduated in first place, at that school they entered with passion, is going to be sacrificed to Mr. Tayyip's need for polarization.

'IT IS BETWEEN MR. TAYYIP AND ME'

Özel: The issue has nothing to do with Ebru or the other lieutenants. The issue is between Mr. Tayyip and me. Regarding the Republican People's Party's March 31 victory and its subsequent course, Mr. Tayyip constantly says, ‘This process benefits the CHP. You need to return them to the old CHP.’ That is why he keeps stepping on our toes. I mean, he is looking for toes to step on. It is a convenient area for him, and he has an effort to drag this issue towards the February 28 process as much as possible by calling it a ‘junta’ or a ‘coup attempt’. They think they are gaining victimhood and a political advantage.

SOMA MINERS

Özel: Let's say the lieutenants are expelled. We will stand by them however we need to. And when the day comes, we will take them back. The day the lieutenants come back, they will go, it is that clear. Every morning I get out of bed for the miners who died in Soma, for Can, for Tayfun, for the Gezi detainees, and on the other hand, for the poor. Suppose the lieutenants are expelled, I will have one more motivation.

SECULARISM RESPONSE TO YUSUF TEKİN

Question: Does Minister of National Education Yusuf Tekin’s rhetoric that ‘CHP will turn mosques into barns’ also serve the polarization purpose you mentioned?

Özel: Yusuf Tekin cannot be doing this on his own. If he is doing this on his own, if he is being cunning by becoming a party to a polemic so as not to be removed from the ministry, thinking ‘Let the President be forced to defend me,’ I wouldn't know that. Can a man be this unconscious? He is doing these things with a certain consciousness. They are all part of a whole.

'THE GOVERNMENT IS IN A PANIC'

Özel: This government has seen that it will go and is in a panic. Against this, one needs to be determined but calm. In all public opinion polls, the first four items in response to the question of the country's most burning problem are related to the economy. The economy, the high cost of living, inflation, unemployment; the total of the four is 80 percent. When you make security and terror the primary concern, things can change, they are playing on that. We must not fall for this game.

RESOLUTION PROCESS

Question: What will the CHP do at the point where the government brings up the Kurdish issue and tries to consolidate its voters?

Özel: It did not find a social base like in the first opening process because Mr. Devlet said something that should not be said even at the end. Now Mr. Tayyip says 'I support it,' but he supports Mr. Devlet without saying the sentences Mr. Devlet said, and says there is no problem between them.

'ERDOĞAN IS UNEASY!'

Question: The People's Alliance persistently says there is a full consensus between the two leaders. How do you read this consensus?

Özel: Our party's position is not one to guess this. But it is like this; Erdoğan is still uneasy and waiting regarding the issue with Bahçeli. Because the issue Bahçeli has put forward is not an attitude in line with universal accumulations aimed at resolving conflict processes and ending terrorism.

VIKING COMPARISON

Özel: Humanity has been performing surgery for 3 thousand years. If someone's tests show certain high values and it is clear on the ultrasound that there is an appendicitis risk, they remove the appendix before it bursts. They put on the surgical gown and take them in. They provide fluid support. They provide oxygen support, they anesthetize. They make 3 holes. They remove the appendix with zero risk using robotic surgery. Now Devlet Bahçeli says, ‘I will do it like the Vikings did. I will take out my dagger, I will slice it open, I will take it out with my own hands’. He dove in headfirst.

Everywhere in the world, there is an acceptance that terrorism emerges as a result of a social problem and the failure to respond to that problem adequately in the democratic arena, and that its permanent solution is to resolve the problem from its roots.

Özel: But right now, this government has drifted to the point of saying ‘There is no Kurdish problem’. After you say this, any democratic opening, without trying to understand the issue people voice as a problem, just saying ‘I will bring someone. I will put him on the podium and he will say ‘lay down your arms’. Believe in this’ is not compatible with universal experiences. Furthermore, it does not excite anyone in Turkey who believes there will be no solution by denying this problem. No one believes it. That is why you cannot believe in its sincerity. Because it denies the existence of the problem it sees and wants to solve.

Question: Bahçeli met with Ufuk Uras and said ‘it is time to make peace’. Do you find it sincere?

Özel: There are more active actors in politics than Mr. Ufuk to whom he could say this. If Mr. Devlet wants to reduce the fight, the right-left conflict, or certain tensions in politics, there are actors who could be more effective than Mr. Ufuk. Or he should say it openly.