Main opposition CHP responds to criticisms of party dissident İnce

ANKARA

The main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) has lengthily responded to criticisms posed by Muharrem İnce, a disgruntled party member and former presidential candidate who has recently announced his “Motherland Movement in 1,000 days.”

In a statement made by the CHP’s communications coordinator on Aug. 13, the party said it had provided 82 million Turkish Liras for his election campaign in 2018, after İnce accused the CHP leadership of undermining his campaign and giving him half-hearted support.

“Some 27 million liras of this figure were transferred to organizations to be used in the presidential election campaign. In addition, 26 million liras of donations were collected in the presidential support campaign and spent during this campaign. The total budget of a previous election campaign was only 16 million liras,” said the written statement.

“CHP officials at polling stations did not do their jobs. Four million votes went to waste. How could I appear before the people on the election night? I was not given data,” he said, referring to anger directed at him during the election night of June 24, 2018, when he disappeared and conceded his defeat to President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in a WhatsApp message to a journalist.

Elaborating on İnce’s accusation that the CHP politically blocked names close to him, the statement said the criteria of the CHP in choosing a candidate is not based on names close to certain people but on who has the biggest potential to win, which gets decided in surveys.

As a response to İnce’s claim that no information flow was provided to the presidential candidate, the headquarters said party spokesperson Bülent Tezcan called the presidential candidate and made an invitation to monitor the results at the headquarters with the CHP leader on the election night, but this invitation was never accepted by İnce.

The CHP protected the ballot boxes during that election more than it ever did in any previous vote, said the statement, stressing this work was carried out with the support of not only the CHP but also the political parties and NGOs forming the Nation Alliance.

CHP, İYİ Party leaders meet in ceremony

Meanwhile, CHP leader Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu and İYİ (Good) Party chair Meral Akşener attended an opening ceremony in the northwestern province of İzmit on Aug. 12.

“No individual of the Nation’s Alliance has any interest in authority and sultanate regardless of its position and place,” said Kılıçdaroğlu at the ceremony.

“I told my mayor friends this: ‘There is one thing you need to remember, and that is that you are the mayor of the Nation Alliance,” he stated, referring to the opposition alliance that handed election victories to many opposition candidates in major cities in Turkey last year.