PM Davutoğlu slams CHP and HDP leader over Gallipoli ceremonies

ANKARA

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Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu has criticized the leaders of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) and the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) over their recent statements on the 100th anniversary of the Gallipoli Campaign.

“The behavior of the two party chairmen obliged me to ask whether or not they read books. One of them [HDP Co-Chair Selahattin Demirtaş] made an insult as he argued that the Ottoman state was the puppet of Germany at the time. He therefore called those who were fighting against imperialists at that time ‘puppets,’” Davutoğlu said in Ankara on March 20. 

The prime minister said those who label patriots as puppets “would not hesitate to become the spokespersons of imperialists today,” in harsh criticism directed at Demirtaş.

Davutoğlu also targeted CHP head Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, who lashed out at the head of the Directorate of Religious Affairs (Diyanet) for not mentioning the name of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk during prayers naming the martyrs and veterans of Gallipoli. Slamming the omission, Kılıçdaroğlu described Diyanet head Mehmet Görmez as an “ungrateful person.”

“I address the head of the main opposition. In which country can a politician call a cleric ‘ungrateful’?
Those who use these words in fact show their own ungratefulness,” Davutoğlu said in response.

“I don’t want to set examples, but I would ask whether a politician in Greece can do the same for the archbishop in Athens - or in Russia toward the Moscow Patriarchate, or anywhere in Europe toward the Pope - and still continue to be seen in public. The affairs of the state and religion are two different things, but they [the opposition] must learn to be respectful of religion,” he added.