Bahçeli vows to protect youth

ANKARA

Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) leader Devlet Bahçeli on Jan. 18 vowed to protect the youth of the country, noting that the loss of innocent lives cannot be tolerated amid a debate over the suicide of Enes Kara, a 20-year-old medical school student who took his life after posting a video in which he detailed his life at a dorm run by a religious group.

“The real issue is to turn suicide into an atrocious political showdown and turn it into a tool of revenge, riveted with hostility towards our conservative and devout people,” Bahçeli said at his party’s parliamentary group meeting.

They are against all backgrounds of abuse and that the young people cannot be left “abandoned,” he added.

In the video watched by millions on social media, Kara says that he was being forced to pray and read the books the cult tells him to, adding that he was very tired psychologically and could not carry on with this anymore.

Opponents are demanding the closure or better supervision of these dormitories.

The suicide of Kara was “exploited with political and ideological prejudices,” he said and added that he was expecting the “Mental Health Bill “to be discussed and accepted in parliament as soon as possible.”

“The real issue is to turn suicide into an atrocious political showdown and turn it into a tool of revenge, riveted with hostility towards our conservative and devout people,” Bahçeli said.

Kara’s suicide has been turned into a “collective attack and a tool of domination by the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), he added.

“Everyone has the right to live the freedom of belief to the fullest within the scope of the law and within the limits of the common conscience,” Bahçeli stated.

“Those who attack our beliefs through a suicide incident, the main reason of which is obscure, and those who engage in a race to defame our moral values as if it was the first time a suicide had occurred, are malicious,” the MHP leader said.

He also criticized the “interest” of the CHP members and foreign diplomatic mission representatives in a court hearing of the case of jailed businessman Osman Kavala.

An Istanbul court on Jan. 17 ruled to keep Kavala, who has been in custody for more than four years, in prison.