Political discussion around conviction futile: Erdoğan

MARDİN

President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said Dec. 17 he had no hand in the jail sentence given to Istanbul Mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu by the court.

“What is behind the storm sparked by a verdict these past few days? This debate has nothing to do with me or with our nation. Because the subject consists of the conviction decision of a person for allegedly insulting the judges. There is neither a political discussion, nor a battle of ideas, nor a struggle for service,” Erdoğan said in a speech during the inauguration of multiple facilities and projects in Mardin.

“We laugh at all the false words uttered so surely” by those seeing a political maneuver in the sentence, he said.

“But we are sad to see that some are trying to conduct their games of thrones through us,” the president added, suggesting reactions to the verdict resulted from rivalries within the opposition.

Noting that the gathering today has been organized for the inauguration of hundreds of facilities and projects with a total investment value of 8.5 billion liras and the current value of nearly 17.5 billion liras, Erdoğan said the locals of Mardin are the closest witnesses to how both Türkiye and Mardin have progressed to the current situation.

Mardin had for years fought to scatter the dark clouds brought over it by the terrorist organization, the president said, adding that countless lives had been lost and countless sufferings had been endured throughout that fight.

The streets and houses destroyed by the terrorist organization in Mardin’s districts of Nusaybin, Dargeçit and Derik have been rebuilt and the municipality, whose resources were plundered by the terrorist organization, has been put into service again, the president said. “You are following the incidents taking place right across our borders. You see the calamities brought on by those who seek their future not in your brotherhood or this nation’s and geography’s brotherhood but in the orders they take from thousands of kilometers away.”

“I don’t even find it necessary to tell the disgusting hypocrisy of those who have designs on the children of this nation while making their own kids live in peace and prosperity,” the president pointed out.

“In fact, the Diyarbakır Mothers, who endeavor to save their children from the claws of the terrorist organization, gave them the best answer. I salute from here the Diyarbakır Mothers, who have been saving their children one by one from the terrorist organization with the struggle they have been putting up determinedly,” he said.

Diyarbakır Mothers is a group who gathers daily for a sit-in protest against the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), demanding the return of their children who allegedly were deceived or kidnapped by the terrorist organization PKK.