MHP leader joins criticisms against CHP lawmaker’s comment on Turkish army

ANKARA

Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) leader Devlet Bahçeli has criticized a main opposition party lawmaker for his comments on the Turkish army and has asked for an explanation for the same.

“The [Republican People’s Party] CHP deputy’s comment that the Turkish army is ‘sold’ is a dishonor that should be asked account for,” he said, addressing the MHP lawmakers at the parliament.

He said the CHP is “a shame of politics that have taken a position against Turkey.”

“Hostility to military means [serving] military service to the enemy. What is left that the CHP did not polarize, tamper with, or confuse?” he asked.

A probe has been launched into the CHP lawmaker Ali Mahir Başarır after he said that “the army was sold,” criticizing the government over the privatization of a national tank factory.

“We are at such a point that the state’s army was sold to Qatar for the first time in the history of the Republic. It is said that it was sold for $20 million, it was sold for $50 million,” Başarır said, elaborating on the transfer of the rights to operate Turkey’s national tank factory to the BMC Turkish-Qatari venture for 25 years.

Bahçeli also slammed the killing of Iran’s top nuclear scientist last week. “The assassination of Iranian scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh on Nov. 27 in a gun attack in Tehran was a brutal murder, no different from the assassination of Gen. Qasem Soleimani,” he said.

“It is clear that this brutal attack was carried out in a very organized manner,” he said, adding that such attacks depict terrorism.

“What grabs our attention is the timing of the assassination,” he said.

Fakhrizadeh was killed by unidentified gunmen on the outskirts of the capital Tehran last week.