CHP has faced its past: deputy leader

The presence of Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, an Alevi from Tunceli, at the helm of the Republican People’s Party (CHP) is in itself a proof that the party has faced up to its past, a senior CHP official said yesterday amid a lingering debate over the party’s role in the Dersim killings.

“The CHP has faced up well to its past. The fact that the CHP has a chairman from Tunceli is in itself an act of facing up [to the past],”said Emine Ülker Tarhan, the CHP deputy group chair.

“Can someone from Tunceli become the chairman of the Justice and Development Party [AKP]? Let alone the chairmanship, how many people from Tunceli are there among you?” she said.

Tarhan charged that Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan was “inciting the people to hatred” and urged him to “close this chapter, which has been orchestrated in order to fan polarization” among the Turkish people.

Referring to Erdoğan’s Islamist past, she called on him “to look in the mirror” and said the CHP cannot be called to account for history by “those who are accustomed to seeing everything on the basis of religious and sectarian identities.”

Tarhan denounced also the massive investigation into the İzmir Municipality as “another dangerous AKP plot staged by using the judiciary” that aimed to usurp the CHP stronghold.

“This is an AKP operation and the kick-off of the AKP’s local election campaign,” she said.