Turkey’s nationalist leader blames gov’t for flaws in refugee policy upon ISIL Istanbul attack

ANKARA

AA Photo

The ruling Justice and Development Party’s (AKP) incapability to appropriately deal with the influx of Syrian refugees’ has lead to very serious security risks, Turkey’s nationalist opposition leader has said, while urging the government to assume a resolved approach against all kinds of terrorist organizations following the deadly suicide attack in Istanbul launched by a jihadist from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL).

“The especially unhealthy, unplanned and random admission of Syrian refugees and their subsequent distribution inside the country have been leading to very serious social, economic and security risks,” Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) leader Devlet Bahçeli said in a written statement released late on Jan. 12.

“It is seen that the AKP government hasn’t been exerting efforts to prevent this stalemate and uncontrolled developments likewise it has no intention for doing so either,” Bahçeli said.

The MHP leader recalled that an ISIL militant also killed 34 socialist activists on July 20, 2015, at the Amara Cultural Center in the southeastern district of Suruç and two ISIL militants then killed at least 100 people attending a peace rally in Ankara on Oct. 10, 2015, in the deadliest attack in the country’s history, while also referring to ongoing clashes between Turkey’s security forces and the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).

“The size of the threat is very big,” Bahçeli said. “In order to get rid of this calamity, the government should assume a contentious and resolved stance before everything else and should confront all kinds of organizations without concession and unconditionally. The response to the bloody attack at Sultanahmet Square which has been understood to have been launched by ISIL should be given in a very weighty way; instigators, collaborators and enemies of mankind who shelter in cell houses should be definitely found and punished,” he said, while extending condolences to the countries of foreigners who lost their lives in the Istanbul attack, where the ISIL suicide bomber killed 10 people on Jan. 12.