Governor who threatened journalist should be removed: Main opposition leader

ANKARA

Republican People's Party (CHP) head Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu speaks during the congress of the Union of Chambers of Certified Accountants of Turkey (TÜRMOB) in Ankara, Oct. 5. AA photo

Main opposition leader Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu has said the Eskişehir governor would have been removed from duty for threatening a journalist who published stories on the death of a Gezi protester if Turkey was "a healthy democracy."

"In a country with a healthy democracy, this governor would have been removed from duty. A governor can't say words such as 'vile' and 'inglorious,'" the Republican People's Party (CHP) leader said at an event in Ankara on Oct. 5.

Eskişehir Governor Azim Tuna, who had previously been subject to public criticism due to his previous remarks on Ali İsmail Korkmaz's beating to death, stirred controversy once again over an e-mail he sent to daily Radikal reporter İsmail Saymaz. Saymaz has published a number of stories on Korkmaz's death, and recently reported on the governor's office's intention to move the trial outside of Eskişehir.

Kılıçdaroğlu also criticized Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan for publicly defending the governor during a live interview. "I don't have the heart to call him a governor, but unfortunately he holds this title," Kılıçdaroğlu said about Tuna.

CHP to accept vote on Charter articles

Kılıçdaroğlu also said during an earlier press briefing at his party headquarters that the CHP was ready to vote at Parliament on the 59 articles that have received the consensus of the four parties in the Constitution Conciliation Commission.

"If the parties bring the articles that make consensus, we will accept them. The problem here is that the [ruling Justice and Development Party] AKP is not sincere. Because they don't want to withdraw [their proposition] on the presidential system," he said, adding that his party also supported the reduction of the electoral threshold, proposed in the government's democratization package.

"They say it could be lowered to 3 percent, or it could be made 5 percent. Or it could be dropped altogether, and they would have no problem with that either," Kılıçdaroğlu said, criticizing the AKP's three propositions on the matter.

"The prime minister should not follow an ambivalent policy and enter a quest of seeing how he can steal votes and appropriate them for his party. We won't accept that," he said.

The package unveiled on Sept. 30 introduced alternatives such as "narrowed regions" to accompany the reduction of the current electoral threshold of 10 percent.

Meanwhile, a group of CHP delegates headed by Kılıçdaroğlu visited the party's Ergenekon convict deputy Mustafa Balbay at Ankara's Sincan prison. Balbay, the former editor-in-chief of daily Cumhuriyet, was sentenced to 34 years and eight months in prison in the trial verdict in early August.