MHP urges its members to be careful about ‘traps’

ANKARA - Hürriyet Daily News

The Nationalist Movement Party leader Devlet Bahçeli warns the opposition party ‘may again face conspiracies and traps and be subjected to provocations and slander.’ AA photo

The Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) has warned its members of “a strong possibility” that they may face fresh “conspiracies, traps and provocations” in the run-up to the party’s great convention next year, after a series of sex tapes shook the MHP ahead of the June elections.

“It is a strong possibility that our party may face again conspiracies and traps and be subjected to provocations and slander,” MHP leader Devlet Bahçeli said yesterday in a written statement as his party began holding local conventions ahead of its 10th great congress next year.

“We will rebut all ploys against us with reason, patience and common sense. People who come to our offices and convention halls will be monitored and police will be notified immediately of any suspicious figures,” he said.

Bahçeli warned his followers to watch out also for “hypocrites who try to weaken us from within and for publications that target our party via the Internet media and through various magazines, associations and platforms.”

An obscure group, calling itself “The Different Nationalists,” posted online compromising bedroom images of MHP members in May, forcing 10 senior party officials to resign only weeks before the parliamentary polls. Some of the victims alleged the government had orchestrated the plot. The perpetrators are yet to be found.

In the same statement, Bahçeli slammed Ankara’s decision to slap sanctions on Syria, warning that “the AKP government’s direct involvement in uprisings and chaos in the neighborhood” was dragging Turkey into “a very dangerous quagmire.”

Bahçeli also criticized once again the ruling party’s polices on Kurdish problem. The AKP’s Kurdish initiative “has thrown Turkey into the twilight of separation,” the nationalist party leader said, adding that the Turkish nation is concerned that “the brotherhood will be harmed in the face of separatist ideas, which are getting stronger and spreading to a wider audience every passing day.”

The opposition leader said the separatists see the process of preparing a new constitution as an opportunity.
“Efforts to twist the historical facts under the names of ‘facing the past’ and ‘ breaking the taboos’ seems to be a catalyst for the new constitution process,” said Bahçeli.