CHP refutes nationalist leader’s call to close HDP

ANKARA

A country cannot sustain its democracy by closing political parties, main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) Spokesperson Faik Öztrak said on Dec. 14, referring to the call of Nationalist Movement Party leader Devlet Bahçeli to shutdown the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP).

“Democracy cannot be sustained by closing political parties. Therefore, the procedure on this subject is clear. It is also clear how this procedure will work. A party is not closed just because Mr. Bahçeli said so,” Öztrak said at a press conference.

The HDP should be “locked up,” Bahçeli said last week, accusing the party of “sheltering terror.”

“The capacity of Turkish politics to carry and absorb the HDP is over. This bed of terror and separatism must be closed,” Bahçeli tweeted on Dec.11.

Elaborating on the government’s measures taken against the COVID-19 pandemic, Öztrak criticized the decision for the closing of the schools.

“We are losing a generation,” he said, noting that the CHP urges the government to take necessary precautions for schooling. “While all the world is trying to keep schools open, we keep skidding.”

The government has lost its ability to manage the country and is “sinking the country along with itself,” Öztrak said.

The CHP spokesperson blamed the government for “sentencing millions of citizens to minimum wages” in Turkey, even attempting to “usurp” the severance pay of employees.