CHP more delusional than Don Quixote: Prime Minister

ISTANBUL- Hürriyet Daily News

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. AA photo

Turkey’s main opposition leader has outdone Don Quixote in his present fight, the prime minister has said in reference to the Republican People’s Party (CHP) head’s recent demand to be stripped of his parliamentary immunity.

“Don Quixote at least fights with windmills, but [CHP leader Kemal] Kılıçdaroğlu does not even know whom he’s fighting with,” Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said at the Energy Sustainability Summit in Istanbul. “They are trying to create a hero out of an official notice,” he said. “They started to talk of gallows and so on; that was not the first official notice from the courts addressing Kılıçdaroğlu,” he said. “Even famous fiction character could not have had such a rich imagination to think of gallows.”
Erdoğan said there were a total of 13 official notices addressing the main opposition party pending at Parliament.

The prime minister added that there were a total of 622 official notices demanding the revocation of certain legislators’ immunity from prosecution.

On Jan. 11, Kılıçdaroğlu applied for the abolition of his judicial immunity and stepped up accusations that the judiciary had become a political weapon in government hands after a prosecutor charged with him “influencing a fair trial” and “insulting public officials” when he described Silivri Prison, which is holding two CHP deputies pending trial, as a “concentration camp.”

Slamming the main opposition leader, Erdoğan said, “Some people from the opposition party have turned Kılıçdaroğlu into a hero, but this is just cheap heroism.”

Erdoğan said Silivri Prison “was not a theater.” “If they want to see a staged drama, they should look at their own party meetings.”

Addressing the CHP parliamentary group on Jan. 10, Kılıçdaroğlu said:

“You cannot intimidate me with your special-authority courts. I am not bowing down to you. I will say what I say even if you send me to prison and even to the gallows.”

He received a hero’s welcome from members of the party following the emotional address.