Erdoğan’s chief advisor has ‘prepared guns,’ ready to die for boss

ISTANBUL

“Nobody can touch the president of this country before I am killed,” Yiğit Bulut said on a live show broadcast by Turkey’s public broadcaster TRT late on May 19.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s chief advisor Yiğit Bulut has declared his readiness to defend his boss with “two pistols and hundreds of bullets,” months after he made headlines claiming that telekinesis-wielding international powers were trying to assassinate Erdoğan.

“Nobody can touch the president of this country before I am killed,” Bulut said on a live show broadcast by Turkey’s public broadcaster TRT late on May 19.

“I have two licensed pistols and I have collected hundreds of bullets over the years thanks to my legal rights. Until I die, until I am shot or hanged, nobody can touch the elected president of this country. There are millions of citizens like me,” he said, laying down the gauntlet to “foreign powers” and “the domestic establishment.”

Bulut, a former news anchor and editor-in-chief of the private broadcaster 24 TV, was appointed as then-Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s chief adviser in July 2013, shortly after making sensational claims during the Gezi protests that “international centers” were trying to kill Erdoğan via telekinesis. He also argued that the German airline Lufthansa was behind the massive anti-government demonstrations across Turkey. 

After Erdoğan’s election as president in August 2014, Bulut was appointed as his chief advisor on economics.

Bulut’s latest defense of Erdoğan came in response to daily Hürriyet’s recent editorial addressing the Turkish president, which had vowed to defend the right to freedom of the press, free speech and freedom to criticize “with no fear.”

Pundit Fatih Tezcan, who is frequently hosted on Turkey's pro-government TV stations, upped the ante soon after Bulut's latest statement. "Whoever has their sights on Erdoğan will be blinded. Whoever intends to kill him will be killed," Tezcan tweeted on May 20, declaring that "Yiğit Bulut is not alone."