PM Erdoğan taking revenge for Gezi protests through co-ed housing: MHP leader

ANKARA - Doğan News Agency

Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) leader Devlet Bahçeli held a rally in Ankara with the attendance of thousands of supporters. DAILY NEWS photo, Selahattin SÖNMEZ

Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) leader Devlet Bahçeli has accused Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan of trying to "take revenge" for the Gezi protests by intruding on the privacy of young people.

"Our prime minister, who praises himself for being a conservative democrat, has sold his political conscience and mercy, lost all tolerance and reason, and is seeking to take revenge on young people. The prime minister is doing everything he can to take the Gezi protests from [the youth]," Bahçeli said at a massive gathering in Ankara on Nov. 9, the last stop of a series of nine party rallies in nine cities that started in June.

"This man is attempting to become the architect of conspiracies incompatible with conscience by making people inform on each other. He has violated private lives, the inviolability of housing, individual rights and freedoms, and dared to put everyone in the same mold. Prime Minister Erdoğan has gone too far and lost control," he told thousands of his supporters gathered at Tandoğan Square.

Bahçeli also expressed his belief that the young people would punish the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) at the elections. 

"The Turkish youth will oust the AKP from power in the same way it came. Doing this has now become a national task for my young brothers. The Turkish youth that has never been so insulted, including during the Gezi incidents, will seal the prime minister's faith. I say that the people and the youth, hand-in-hand, will wave goodbye to the government," Bahçeli said.

The MHP leader also noted that sex-related crimes had increased by 30 percent in the last five years and that drug abuse had also become a very common problem. He also harshly criticized the removal of a prominent plaque in the southeastern city of Diyarbakır carrying the motto, "Happy is the one who calls him or herself a Turk."

"The AKP should be defeated by politics via elections before it destroys the Turkish people," he said.

At the same rally, Bahçeli also presented his candidate for the Ankara mayoralty at the upcoming March 2014 local elections, Mevlüt Karakay.