Ruling Justice and Development Party (AK Party) deputy chair and spokesperson Ömer Çelik hit out at Özgür Özel over the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) leader’s remarks targeting President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.
Özel has reiterated his description of Erdoğan as ‘junta leader’ in a rally on Sunday in the northern province of Samsun, the latest in a series of demonstrations by CHP after the arrest of Istanbul mayor Ekrem Imamoğlu in March on charges of corruption.
Çelik said in a social media post on Monday that Özel lacked the knowledge of political terms and more frighteningly, “has a political discourse exactly copied from Europe’s far-right circles.” “The remarks he uttered against the president are exactly the same remarks by anti-Turkish, anti-Muslim European far-right politicians,” he said, in a thinly veiled reference to firebrand Dutch politician Geert Wilders.
“CHP had many chairs who labored for politics and left marks in Türkiye’s political history. Although we disagreed with them, they had an appropriate approach to several political issues. Özel lacks this approach,” Çelik stated.
