AKP lawmaker’s comment on CHP criticized by own party

ANKARA

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A recent column by ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) Ankara lawmaker Aydın Ünal in which he included the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) on a list of terrorist organizations has provoked criticism in his own party while causing outrage among CHP members. 

“It is not right under any circumstances to include the CHP on a list where terrorist organizations are listed. It is unacceptable. It is a clear situation,” European Union Minister Ömer Çelik told reporters on Dec. 12. 

“I find the CHP’s offense right and I understand its reaction. I say that I rebuke this approach,” Çelik said.

AKP Deputy Group Chairman Naci Bostancı said Ünal’s opinion did not represent the party’s official outlook. 

“It is not our party’s opinion. An individual wrote to a paper. It can be replied to in the same way,” Bostancı said. 

“This is not any column. This is an unreasonable approach which defines an ideology for the AKP, that directs the electorate and readers, and that organizes and coordinates the unfair attacks against our party,” Özgür Özel, the deputy group chairman of the CHP, said in a parliamentary hearing on Dec. 12.

“Where are you in these derogatory evaluations of hatred, of targeting, of being an obvious lie? Do you condemn it and stand behind it?” Özel asked the AKP group in the parliament, criticizing Ünal’s comments. 

In his column in daily Yeni Şafak, Ünal criticized the CHP for not distancing itself from terrorist organizations.

“The CHP does not distance itself from leftist terrorist organizations, sometimes with its ‘leftist’ mask, and sometimes with its sectarian fanaticism,” Ünal wrote Dec. 11. 

“It provides political logistics by blaming the president and the government after each attack by ISIL [Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant], the PKK [outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party], the DHKP-C [outlawed Revolutionary People’s Liberation Party/Front] and FETÖ [Fethullahist Terrorist Organization], within the same framework as the terrorist organizations’ plans. Its policies and discourse coincide with those of terrorist organizations along with that of Europe,” he said.