PM, President attack HDP on claims of supporting ISIL

ANKARA

AFP photo

The prime minister and the president offices have taken aggressive stances in their remarks refusing charges of neglect in the face of potential threats posed by militants of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), as both offices attacked the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) for its belief in the government’s tacit support of ISIL militants.

“I’m calling on those who attempt to score political goals through the very young while their ties with terrorist organizations are obvious. It is enough now that you have contaminated politics with blood,” Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu, the leader of the incumbent Justice and Development Party (AKP), said late July 21.

“There is no cooperation with terror, arms and murder gangs in the AKP’s history,” Davutoğlu said on his Twitter account shortly before midnight.

Earlier on July 21, delivering a speech in front of the culture center in the Suruç border town of Şanlıurfa where a suicide bombing killed at least 32 people, HDP’s co-chair Selahattin Demirtaş had bitterly criticized both Davutoğlu’s government and President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan for turning a blind eye to activities of ISIL.

The blast on July 20 tore through a group of university-aged students from an activist group as they gathered before a planned trip to help rebuild the nearby Syrian Kurdish town of Kobane. 

“Thirty-two young people were torn to pieces, yet the president does not bother to cancel his trip to Cyprus. The president has virtually declared the HDP a ‘terrorist organization.’ Yet he has nothing to say against ISIL.

No operations, no detainments, no arrests,” Demirtaş said, recalling that on the day of the attack, Erdoğan went ahead with his scheduled official visit to Turkish Cyprus. 

“Mr. Davutoğlu, if you’re not aware of the support given to ISIL in Turkey, you have yet to become a prime minister. It’s worse if it’s all happening within your knowledge,” Demirtaş also said, reiterating his call for an extraordinary assembly of parliament and asking for the support of 30 deputies in addition to the HDP’s 80 deputies in order to reach the required number for declaring such a meeting.

The HDP co-leader’s remarks also prompted presidential spokesperson İbrahim Kalın to deliver exclusive remarks to the state-run Anadolu Agency late on July 21, before midnight.

Turkey’s determination to fight against all terrorist organizations including ISIL is obvious, Kalın told the agency.

“On the other hand, the situation of those who don’t oppose the PKK’s [the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party] terrorist actions, on the contrary, who exert effort for trying to show it as cute and legitimizing it, is obvious,” Kalın said.

“It is not acceptable that HDP co-chair Selahattin Demirtaş tried to wear out our President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan with imaginative claims and deliberate distortions in his speech delivered in Suruç today,” Kalın added.