Opposition fumes at popular website

The Republican People’s Party (CHP) has urged readers “not to take seriously” stories published by the Gerçek Gündem website, which is known to be close to the party’s deputy chairman, Gürsel Tekin, after it published several unusually critical comments.

The website “is seeking to mislead the CHP corps and create doubts over the party’s renewal,” the party said in a statement yesterday.

Articles on Gerçek Gündem about the CHP are “fabrication and do not reflect the truth,” the statement said. “Our party members should not take this website seriously.”

The appeal came after Gerçek Gündem, which has so far backed CHP chairman Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, criticized discrepancies in party politics and described Kılıçdaroğlu as “ideologically confused” in two harshly-worded articles by the website’s owner and editor-in-chief, Barış Yarkadaş.

“Kılıçdaroğlu’s confusion derives from an ideological factor. He took its ideology from The Turkish Economic and Social Studies Foundation [TESEV].

Kılıçdaroğlu is one of the founders of TESEV, which is supported by George Soros, chairman of the Open Society Foundation,” Yarkadaş wrote on Nov. 13.

He likened the CHP to “an NGO in which everybody is talking all at once” and suggested that support for Kılıçdaroğlu was diminishing at the grassroots level.

The website’s U-turn sparked fresh speculation of infighting within the CHP, where Tekin is one of the most influential figures. k HDN