ERDOGAN SUPPORTERS COME UNDER FIRE
▶ Devlet Bahceli paid for advertising in two major newpapers to criticise pundits, journalists and pollsters
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s nationalist ally, who is likely to be a key power-broker in parliament after Sunday’s election, published a list of opinion-formers he accused of discrediting his party “nonstop” before the vote.
Devlet Bahceli, leader of the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), took out an advertisement in two of Turkey’s most widely read newspapers with the sarcastic headline “A Thank You Message”. Under a huge picture of Mr Bahceli, with a Turkish flag in the background, appeared a list of about 70 people.
Pollsters and academics were on it, but most of those named were journalists – including several who write for the papers that carried the ad.
“I thank them for their countless slanders. I thank them for their shocking claims,” Mr Bahceli said in the advertisement. “We will never forget what they have done, what they have written, what they have destroyed.”
The advertisement appeared in pro-government newspapers Hurriyet and Sabah. Many of the journalists named are known for their frequent articles in praise of Mr Bahceli’s election ally, Mr Erdogan.
Turkey had the world’s highest number of journalists in jail last year, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists, and Mr Erdogan’s government has been widely criticised for suppressing freedom of the press.
Mr Bahceli declined to run for president and asked his supporters to back Mr Erdogan in that contest.
In parliamentary balloting, his party did better than all pollsters forecast, winning 11 per cent of the vote. That allowed Mr Erdogan’s alliance to secure control of the legislature – but it also means that the president will be reliant on Mr Bahceli’s support for decrees that require a majority in parliament, giving the nationalist chief some leverage to pursue his own agenda.
Mr Bahceli has called for an amnesty that would allow some of Turkey’s most notorious mafia bosses to get out of jail.
Journalists responded to Mr Bahceli’s advertisement on social media. “Just so you know, I will keep opposing your insistence on a general amnesty as much as the power of my pen permits,” Haberturk writer Sevilay Yilman, whose name was on the list, said on Twitter.
The alliance between former rivals Mr Bahceli and Mr Erdogan was cemented after a failed coup attempt against the president in 2016.
The MHP’s history stretches back almost half a century, and in the 1970s it was associated with political assassinations and street violence by far-right gangs, although under Mr Bahceli it has shifted towards the mainstream.
Meanwhile, the leader of Turkey’s main opposition party refused to congratulate Mr Erdogan on his decisive election victory, describing the strongman as a dictator running a one-man regime.
The secular Republican People’s Party (CHP) chief Kemal Kilicdaroglu chose Muharrem Ince to challenge Mr Erdogan in the presidential elections. Mr Ince polled a respectable 30.6 per cent but failed to force a second round.
But in his first comments since Mr Erdogan was declared winner, Mr Kilicdaroglu sounded the alarm over the new powers the president would assume under constitutional changes that now come into force.
“You cannot congratulate someone who ties the executive, judicial and legislative organs to themselves. You cannot congratulate someone who defends a one-man regime. What are you congratulating?” Mr Kilicdaroglu said.
“If the person says they will run with a one-man regime to the end, why should I congratulate a dictator?” he said.