Main opposition CHP head urges party to resist ‘provocations’

ANKARA

Attacks targeting the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) will increase and the party must be careful to resist “provocations,” CHP head Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu has said, after a senior party official was shot in the leg on Oct. 29. 

“My deputy chair, Bülent Tezcan, was injured by a bullet. Provocations against the CHP will increase … We have to be very careful about provocations targeting us. We have to be prudent and cautious,” Kılıçdaroğlu said on Nov. 1 in a speech to his party group in parliament. 

He particularly recalled an incident in when he escaped two separate armed attacks by outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) militants targeting his party’s motorcade in the Şavşat district of the Black Sea province of Artvin on Aug. 25. 

“A bullet has also been thrown at me during a martyr’s funeral, and one of my deputy chairs has been injured by a bullet. If a price has to be paid, it will be me who first pays that price,” Kılıçdaroğlu said. 

More armed groups could appear in the post-July 15 coup attempt process, he also warned, slamming the government for imposing a “regime of chaos in the country.” 

“Could there possibly be a state like this?” he added, repeating his earlier claim that the attack on Tezcan was a well-planned act. 

“It was a planned attack and I am curious about the will behind it,” he said.

“They said [he was] a nationalist. But nationalists are patriots: They love their flag and they love their country. Those who act on someone else’s command and shoot someone cannot be a person of an ideal. They are prone to being exploited,” Kılıçdaroğlu added.

Tezcan was shot in his foot on Oct. 29 while he was in a restaurant in the Aegean province of Aydın. The perpetrator of the act, identified as Alparslan Sargın, was caught by police shortly after the attack.