İYİ Party leader accuses gov’t of being late in introducing tight measures against COVID-19

ANKARA

İYİ (Good) Party leader Meral Akşener criticized the government for “failing” in handling the COVID-19 pandemic and said the country was late to take tight measures to curb the spread of the infection.

“For months, they thought they could deceive everyone by hiding the number of cases and by only revealing the number of patients. That didn’t happen either. They just deceived themselves,” Akşener said, addressing her lawmakers in parliament on Dec. 1, once more calling for a full lockdown for two weeks.

She blamed the government for misleading the public perception by saying that Turkey was handling the outbreak well.

Akşener pointed at the fact that there are countries in the world that are in bad condition when it comes to controlling the infection, but also there are countries that have managed to protect themselves against the second wave of the outbreak.

“Your job is not to point at the poor countries but to bring Turkey among the best ones. But even when it comes to the lives of our citizens; You thought you could escape responsibility through political communication, perception management, and propaganda,” she said.

“We hoped they would learn from the mistakes of some countries; they didn’t,” the politician added.

Akşener criticized President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan for holding rallies across Turkey and said his attitude was one of the reasons behind this misperception of the public on the issue of the outbreak despite the increase in figures in the country.

“When you did not mind holding rallies and throwing tea to people [at rallies], of course, we had citizens who thought everything was fine and did not follow the rules,” she stated.