A funeral ceremony was held for Spec. Sgt. Hakan Aktürk on Aug. 20. (Photo: DHA)
President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan reportedly told the sister of a special sergeant who was recently killed in a PKK attack that her brother should not have chosen to join the army after the woman criticized him for fueling the Kurdish conflict for political gains during a recent phone talk.
The conversation between the sister of Spec. Sgt. Hakan Aktürk, who was killed in an attack by the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) in Siirt last week, was made public by the soldier’s mother-in-law, Emine Küçüktamer, during a visit paid by a group of Republican People’s Party (CHP) deputies to Aktürk’s family in Osmaniye.
Küçüktamer said Erdoğan called her daughter, the wife of Aktürk, after a funeral ceremony held for the slain soldier last week. “My daughter did not respond to the call, the sister of the martyr did. It was President Erdoğan calling. ‘Who are you? The president or the prime minister?’ the sister asked. He said he is the president. ‘If your son Bilal is also wrapped in a Turkish flag like this one day, you can understand us. Should our sons pay the price for decreasing votes for you?’ she also asked. And then the president told her that her brother should not have chosen this profession then,” Küçüktamer quoted Erdoğan and Aktürk’s sister as saying during the phone talk.
“Is this something that can be uttered by anyone who is 60 years old, let alone a president?” Küçüktamer continued.
Turkey faces wave after wave of attacks by the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) since the June 7 elections.
After the June 7 general election, the AK Party lost its majority in Parliament and the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) passed the 10 percent electoral threshold, winning 80 seats in Parliament. This led to the collapse of the Kurdish settlement process that was launched in 2011 to resolve the country’s decades-old Kurdish problem, which has seen Kurds’ cultural and political rights unrecognized by the state as equal to those of other ethnic groups.
Critics accuse Erdoğan of trying to benefit from an environment of chaos and an approaching snap election and to win back voters who had drifted away in the June general election and cost the Justice and Development Party (AK Party) he founded its parliamentary majority.
Erdoğan and the AK Party is accused of planning to use controlled chaos to “direct” people who may fear political and economic instability into voting for the AK Party in an early election scheduled for Nov. 1.
source: Zaman