Opposition head Bahçeli slams arrests

ISTANBUL - Hürriyet Daily News

Turkey got weaker under the rule of the AKP, says MHP leader Devlet Bahçeli. AA Photo

Leader of the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) Devlet Bahçeli said Turkey was stuck in a highly tense and perilous position, in reference to recent arrests.

“Specially authorized courts are filling the prisons with people from all strata; this is dragging Turkey into a deadlock. The law should build peace, but instead it became the tool for oppression and authoritarianism,” Bahçeli said yesterday in a written statement.

“Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s intolerance against democratic reactions encourages this serious process. In this manner the plausibility of the legal system is fading away with each passing day. Turkey got weaker under the rule of the Justice and Development Party [AKP]. Public institutions have turned topsy turvy; social values are targeted by the loot [called] ‘advanced democracy,’” Bahçeli said.

Bahçeli also lashed out at prolonged trial periods, indicating that arresting a person was an exceptional method that often turned out to be “an actual sentence.”

The hidden details of the 1980 coup must be brought to light, Bahçeli said. The responsibility for cruelties committed during the coup cannot be laid upon only two men, he said in the written statement yesterday.
“Some day everyone will understand that those who staged the Sept. 12, 1980, coup had similar aims as those who put the constitutional amendments of Sept. 12, 2010, to a referendum,” Bahçeli added.