Nationalist leader Bahçeli slams government’s ODTÜ stance

SAMSUN - Hürriyet

Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) leader Devlet Bahçeli speaks during his party's rally in Samsun on Oct. 26. AA photo

Nationalist leader Devlet Bahçeli has joined the denouncement of the Ankara Metropolitan Municipality’s holiday-night raid to clear-cut trees at Middle Eastern Technical University (ODTÜ) during a party rally in Samsun.
 
“Are you serving the republic by supposedly building a road through ODTÜ with a raid during [the Feast of Sacrifice]?” Bahçeli said, slamming Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s stance in front of a crowd of 50,000 Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) supporters today.
 
“Are you talking about civilization after setting fire to the tents of young people who were camping in Gezi Park?” Bahçeli said.  
 
Bahçeli also commented on Erdoğan’s recent statement saying that if needed, the government would demolish a mosque to build a road.
 
“If you are destroying a mosque for a road, you would as a matter of course blow up the republic for your comrade, the murderer leader,” Bahçeli said in reference to the jailed leader of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), Abdullah Öcalan.
 
He added that if anyone other than Erdoğan would have said such thing, he would be accused of blasphemy and Islamophobia. 
 
Bahçeli called on his supporters for giving an electoral setback to the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP). 
 
“This government should be warned in the upcoming [March 2014] local elections. Then, the prime minister’s dreams of becoming a president will be wrecked,” Bahçeli said. 
 
During a previous meeting in Istanbul on Oct. 5, Bahçeli also slammed the government’s recent democratization package, particularly the removal of the student’s oath. He vowed to restore the pledge should the MHP come to power.