Today (June 11), President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan visited the headquarters of Turkey’s main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) in Ankara. Erdoğan’s visit, a first since 2006, comes after a visit by CHP Chairman Özgür Özel to the president’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) headquarters in early May.
The meeting between the two leaders took place at 16:00 Tuesday afternoon and lasted approximately 1.5 hours. Although there was no press statement following the meeting, the two leaders had been expected to cover many of the same topics discussed during their May 2 meeting at the AKP headquarters.
While Erdoğan continues in his push for a new constitution, Özel’s priorities include topics as hikes to the minimum wage and pensioner checks, compliance with Turkish Constitutional Court and European Court of Human Rights rulings, and large debts left by AKP predecessors in municipalities taken over by CHP politicians following Turkey’s recent local elections.
Opposition figures of late have criticized the AKP’s failure to comply with recent rulings from the Constitutional Court, such as in the Can Atalay case, as well as a ruling declaring the right to hold demonstrations in İstanbul’s Taksim Square on May 1st.
Massive restrictions leading to hundreds of arrests occurred on May 1st despite the ruling.
Pardoning of convicts
The potential pardoning of convicts from past trials in Turkey had been expected to be a major topic in Tuesday afternoon’s meeting.
Following the May 2 meeting between Özel and Erdoğan, the president pardoned seven senior incarcerated military officers who had been convicted for their role in the 1997 ‘postmodern coup’ that resulted in the resignation of then-Prime Minister Necmettin Erbakan.
Erbakan, a staunch Islamist and leader of the Milli Görüş movement and now-banned Welfare Party, is widely viewed as Erdoğan’s predecessor.
The incarcerated military generals, now in advanced age, were pardoned on the basis of ‘health issues’.
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Following the president’s pardoning of generals implicated in the ‘postmodern coup’, Özel is expected to push for the release of convicts imprisoned in the Gezi Park case, including businessman and philanthropist Osman Kavala.
Kavala has been imprisoned since 2017 for his role in the 2013 Gezi Park Protests, under the charge of attempting to overthrow the Turkish government.
Since 2019, the European Court of Human Rights has issued numerous calls for Kavala’s release.
Recent trustee appointment in Hakkari
In perhaps the most controversial move since Özel and Erdoğan’s original May 2nd meeting, the recently elected mayor of Turkey’s southeastern Hakkari province was removed from office and detained on June 3 over alleged terror connections.
In his place, an AKP-appointed ‘trustee mayor’ was installed.
The removal of Hakkari Mayor Mehmet Sıddık Akış, who belongs to the pro-Kurdish DEM Party, follows a pattern in which Erdoğan’s central government in Ankara ousts elected officials in heavily-Kurdish southeastern Anatolia and replaces them with AKP trustees.
Prior to the meeting Tuesday, the ousting of Akış was expected to be a topic of discussion between the two leaders. Özel has opposed the move and described the mayor’s removal as ‘inconsistent with the political normalization’ currently being pursued by Erdoğan.
In a similar episode from early April, the mayor-elect of the neighboring province of Van was disqualified and replaced by his AKP runner-up, only to have his victory reinstated just days later following massive protests and outcry from opposition parties, including the CHP and DEM.
First visit in 18 years
Erdoğan’s visit to the CHP headquarters was his first in nearly two decades.
In 2006, then-Prime Minister Erdoğan visited the party headquarters shortly after its grand opening, when he dropped by to wish then-CHP head Deniz Baykal best wishes in the new party building.
Written/translated by Leo Kendrick for Medyascope
