Kemal Kilicdaroglu Archives

Turkey: Kılıçdaroğlu: We were asked not to prosecute Erdoğan and his family during the coalition talks

October 1, 2015 by administrator

(Photo: Cihan)

Republican People’s Party (CHP) leader Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu has reportedly stated that during the coalition talks held after the June 7 election, the Justice and Development Party (AK Party) asked him for an assurance that President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and his family members would not be charged with corruption and sent to trial.

“During the [coalition] talks, we were asked to give a guarantee that we would not touch Erdoğan or his family members. Of course we rejected this request and told them [AK Party officials] that this had nothing to do with us. This is the work of the judiciary, not us,” CHP leader Kılıçdaroğlu claimed, according to a report that appeared in the Cumhuriyet daily on Thursday.

Police investigations made public on Dec. 17 and 25, 2013 revealed what was allegedly the biggest corruption and bribery scandal in the history of the republic and which implicated some top officials of the AK Party government as well as President Erdoğan and members of his family. Prosecutors ultimately dropped the investigations.

“During the talks, I told [interim Prime Minister Ahmet] Davutoğlu that the CHP would give absolute support to the reopening of the corruption investigations. I also told him that we would also support any proposal to reduce or completely cancel the presidency’s budget. Those words of mine were immediately conveyed to the presidential palace, he [Erdoğan] interfered and the talks reached a dead end,” Kılıçdaroğlu added.

The budget of the presidency has been increased by 99 percent, to TL 397 million for 2015, according to the government’s recently announced Middle-term Economic Program (OVP).

Erdoğan’s son, Bilal, is a member of the executive board of the Foundation of Youth and Education in Turkey (TÜRGEV), and was accused of receiving unlawful donations TÜRGEV was at the center of the corruption investigation, which included several serious allegations of bribery and irregularities within the foundation.

In one of numerous recorded telephone conversations that were anonymously leaked online, then-Prime Minister Erdoğan and Bilal are allegedly heard talking about a plan how to get rid of huge sums of money stashed at several houses. Erdoğan, at the beginning of the conversation, briefs Bilal about a police operation going on at the time, including the search of suspects’ homes, and asks him to “zero” money by distributing it among several businessmen. Toward the end of a series of conversations that day, Bilal tells his father that he and others have “finished the tasks you gave us,” implying that the money was removed from the premises.

In another recorded conversation, Erdoğan was allegedly heard accepting two villas from businessman Mustafa Latif Topbaş in return for easing zoning restrictions in İzmir’s Urla district.

Erdoğan has claimed that the corruption investigations were an attempted coup conducted by influential international groups and their proxies in Turkey seeking to topple the AK Party government.

Report: ZAMAN

How much prove The USA need that Turkey is “ISIS” Kılıçdaroğlu: I watched video of weapons in Syria-bound MİT trucks

May 20, 2015 by administrator

CHP leader Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu. (Photo: Today’s Zaman, Ali Ünal)

Main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) leader Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu told journalists on Tuesday that he saw video footage showing arms and ammunition in Syria-bound trucks belonging to the National Intelligence Organization (MİT) which were stopped by gendarmes and police last year.

Speaking with journalists from the Hurriyet daily at a breakfast on Tuesday morning, Kılıçdaroğlu said the security of Turkey’s Syrian border will be made as strong as pre-2011 levels once the CHP becomes the government. “Illegal border crossings, migrant smuggling and arms smuggling will not be overlooked,” he declared.

Confirming a recent revelation by Yasin Aktay, the ruling Justice and Development Party (AK Party) deputy chairman responsible for foreign affairs, who said on video that MİT trucks were carrying arms to the anti-regime Free Syrian Army (FSA) rather than to the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), Kılıçdaroğlu said the gendarmerie and police filmed the opening of the crates on the trucks inside which can be seen arms and ammunition. “I watched. It is not possible to hide it. It was not humanitarian aid loaded in the trucks.” He added.

The short video, posted on Saturday on the Oda TV website, shows Aktay arguing with a local man who was apparently criticizing the government for supporting ISIL.

In the video, which Oda TV said was recorded in the southeastern province of Siirt, Aktay is heard having a discussion with the man, who says ISIL militants are given treatment at Turkish hospitals in Adana and who accuses the government of supporting ISIL’s offensive on Kobani. During the conversation, the man asks about the trucks, which he says are carrying arms to ISIL.

“They were going to the FSA,” Aktay responds, “and the FSA’s number one enemy is ISIL.”

Top Turkish officials, including President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu, have maintained in the past that the trucks were carrying humanitarian aid to Turkmens in Syria. Aktay is the first person to reveal that the weapons-filled trucks were on their way to the FSA.

In January 2014 Turkish gendarmes and police stopped the Syria-bound trucks in Adana and Hatay after prosecutors received tip-offs that the vehicles were illegally carrying arms to Syria. The weapons were allegedly destined for extremist groups in Syria, including ISIL and al-Qaeda affiliates.

The government has called the interception of the trucks, which turned out to be operated by MİT, an act of “treason and espionage.” Four prosecutors who ordered the trucks to be searched and a gendarmerie officer have been arrested in connection with the interception.

Source: Zaman

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Being Armenian is not insult, Turkey’s Republican People’s Party (CHP) Chairman Kemal Kilicdaroglu, Mothers Is Armenian

October 10, 2012 by administrator

October 01, 2012 | 00:14

ISTANBUL. – An Istanbul court made a ruling on the lawsuit filed by Turkey’s main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) Chairman Kemal Kilicdaroglu, who had sued the author of the book entitled “Engineer Kemal: Son of Dersim Armenian [Woman] Yemus” and noted that a slander campaign was launched against him by way of ethnic identity.

The court, however, ruled that the harsh and crude expressions used in the book are within the parameters of freedom of speech specified by the European Convention on Human Rights, Istanbul’s Agos Armenian bilingual weekly reports.

According to the ruling, the expressions used in the book do not jeopardize Kilicdaroglu’s political career and his professional and personal life.

To note, the aforesaid book was distributed in the Turkish parliament in February 2011, and it included offensive expressions against the CHP leader, and his mother’s being Armenian was portrayed from an offensive point of view.

As a result, Kemal Kilicdaroglu had filed a claim for compensation and demanded that the court order the collection of the book’s copies from bookstores.

Shades of Obama

Kılıçdaroğlu is a member of the minority Alevi sect that is particular to Turkey. (The Alevis are known for their liberal interpretation of Islam; they neither fast during Ramadan nor pray in mosques). He hails from a humble family in Tunceli, a largely Alevi and Kurdish province in the southeast that is notorious for its popular rebellions. His mother is said to be an ethnic Armenian. (His wife, a maternal cousin, must therefore be half Armenian.) Kılıçdaroğlu told me in an interview that he was not Kurdish but from a Turkmen tribe that migrated from Iran centuries ago. Yet his family speaks a Kurdish dialect known as Zazaki.

This diverse background invites comparisons with President Obama. Yet, like Obama, the CHP leader plays his background down and, despite it, managed to claw his way into the Turkish bureaucracy, where he held several influential posts. An economist by training, Kılıçdaroğlu rose through the ranks of the Finance Ministry and became the head of the Social Security Agency before entering politics in 1999.

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