Akşener denies allegations over talks with Erdoğan

ANKARA

Former İYİ (Good) Party leader Meral Akşener has refuted allegations that her recent meeting with President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan was linked to an ongoing case involving a businessman at the Court of Appeals.

“This allegation not only implicates me but also casts undue suspicion on the independent Turkish courts and the president,” Akşener wrote in a detailed two-page social media post, denying the accusations.

Akşener did not disclose the reason for her meeting with Erdoğan at the presidential complex.

The İYİ Party, under Akşener’s leadership during the local elections on March 31, secured 3.77 percent of the votes, making it the sixth-largest party in Türkiye.

After the elections, Akşener chose not to seek reelection as party leader at the congress on April 27. Subsequently, Müsavat Dervişoğlu was elected as the head.

Addressing another rumor, Akşener denied reports that she had opened a work office in central Ankara after stepping down from her role.

“I have not opened an office anywhere in Türkiye for any purpose. I am not in such plans for now,” she said.

Meanwhile, Dervişoğlu implicitly criticized Akşener’s visit to Erdoğan during a parliamentary meeting on June 12.

“There is no place in the İYİ Party for so-called politics that comes from the dark corridors of a palace with a thousand candles of discord burning in its thousand rooms. In our politics, the only hands that can be held are the calloused hands of our people,” he said.

"Just like yesterday, palaces are not for us today."

Dervişoğlu has previously said he learned about the meeting through social media.

“I should have been taken as the interlocutor,” he told private broadcaster HaberTürk. “I will not allow any steps that will disrupt the past, present and future of the party. I am not anyone's official.”