Turkish President Erdoğan slams İYİ Party leader

MARDİN

President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has accused opposition İYİ (Good) Party leader Meral Akşener of “distorting” his remarks on the Kurdish issue.

“Now they have made up a lie; I supposedly declared the Kurds who voted for the HDP as terrorists. They’ve seen that they cannot sell their arguments, so they’ve resorted to lying. Mrs. Akşener is doing this,” Erdoğan said at a rally on March 7.

“Having no shame, she suggests that I called my brothers in Denizli terrorists,” Erdoğan said, announcing that his lawyers filed a legal complaint against her. “The March 31 local elections will hopefully end these,” he said.

At a rally in Denizli on March 6, Akşener saluted crowds, saying: “How are you, the people of Denizli, who have been identified by the president as terrorists.”

“When we want to strengthen our country with brotherhood, some try to instill separatism among us,” Erdoğan said.

The PKK has been harming Turkey since 1984, including the police, village guards, the nation, but mostly “our Kurdish brothers,” Erdoğan said

The government has made investments worth 28 quadrillion Turkish Liras in the southeastern province of Mardin in the past 17 years, he said, referring to the number of years the AKP has ruled Turkey.

Erdoğan said the HDP was not successful in the local administration of Mardin and hailed the province’s management after the state appointed a trustee to replace HDP mayors.

The HDP made life more difficult for locals by being supported by the PKK, which dug trenches to fight Turkish security forces, he said.

“We reconstructed a total of 240 kilometers of roads that were destroyed by trenches dug. We have restored those ruined areas,” he said.

Erdoğan was referring to deadly clashes in Turkey’s southeastern provinces in 2015 during which Ankara has accused the PKK of digging trenches while fighting security forces. Curfews were declared in several districts in the country’s southeastern region.