Erdoğan slams CHP leader over remarks on public servants

ISTANBUL

President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has criticized the remarks by main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) leader Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu on public servants, saying the statement made is a “crime.”

“Kılıçdaroğlu’s threat to public officials, I put aside his political weirdness, is also clearly a crime,” Erdoğan said at a press conference before departing for Angola on Oct. 17.

His statement is a “clear admission that the CHP mentality is a tutelage mentality,” Erdoğan said.

“Inviting the bureaucracy to oppose the specially elected government is nothing but a call for tutelage. Of course, this is not the first such madness of the CHP mentality. This illegal call is a serious threat to public order. They do not know what state government, national will, or democracy is,” he stated.

The nation has “revealed its will” for the Presidential Government System, and one of the reasons for this preference is to permanently abolish the tutelage system, he emphasized.

The president said that in the previous parliamentary system, there were always conflicts between the bureaucracy and the elected will.

“The CHP mentality has always used bureaucracy as an instrument to limit the elected will, and of course, we are tired of this as a nation. As our nation was tired of all this, it preferred the presidential system,” he said.

The new administrative system prevented the bureaucracy from “doing politics and taking steps against the nation,” he said, adding, “The new system abolished the political character of the bureaucracy and turned the bureaucracy into a real administrative bureaucracy.”

The “tutelage days” have remained in the history and Turkey as a state of law, Erdoğan said.

Underlining that everyone, from the president to the lowest official, has to do their duty in accordance with the law, Erdoğan said that the same obligation applies to all politicians and, of course, members of the opposition.

“How could you threaten the officials of this country? You threaten the teachers. You threaten the officers. Sometimes you threaten the police and sometimes the judiciary,” he added.

He recalled that Kılıçdaroğlu gave a date to “ask account” for the public servants, and said, “We’ll see what he will do. Mr. Kemal, in this country, there is a government which defends the rights of its officers, judges, police, teachers and all of them.”

In this critical period that the world is going through, Turkey needs a policy of works and services, not this kind of “destruction policy,” he said and called on the citizens who are devoted to the CHP to take action to “save their parties from this pathetic situation.”

Recalling a meeting of Kılıçdaroğlu with the Central Bank governor on Oct. 15, Erdoğan said: “You are discussing the independence of the Central Bank. Did the governor of the Central Bank give you an appointment? Did he give you an appointment the day you requested an appointment? If he had not been independent, he might not have given you this appointment.”

The CHP leader on Oct. 16 called on the bureaucrats with a video he posted on his Twitter account, and it was his last call.

“As of Monday, Oct. 18, you will be responsible for all your support to the illegal requests of this order. You can’t get away with this dirty work by saying, ‘I have received orders.’ Whatever you are forced to do illegally, stop as of Monday. Get your hands off these illegal, parallel systems,” he said.