A change in the Turkish government will have no effect on the state’s national security policies, Mansur Yavaş, the mayor of Ankara said on Friday during an election rally in Anatolia.
Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, the presidential candidate of the opposition parties, has chosen to avoid commenting on the Turkish government’s efforts to implicate its rivals over ties with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). By mentioning the recent statements of the PKK leaders, calling for support to the opposition for 14 May elections, the Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has accused Kılıçdaroğlu of taking orders from the PKK headquarters in northern Iraq’s Qandil in almost all of his speeches.
While Kılıçdaroğlu, the leader of the Republican People’s Party (CHP) remains almost completely silent on Erdoğan’s statements, Meral Akşener, the leader of the centre-right Good Party, and Mansur Yavaş, the CHP mayor of Ankara, have taken the role of refuting the government’s claims on the opposition’s cooperation with the PKK while touring together in the mostly conservative-nationalist central Anatolia ahead of 14 May polls.
Yavaş said on Friday that the opposition parties had not made a distinction between the PKK and the Kurdish Islamist group Hizbullah, unrelated to the Lebanese Hezbollah.
The opposition is using the ruling Justice and Development Party’s (AKP) election alliance with the Free Cause Party (Hüda-Par), which was established on the ashes of the infamous Hizbullah and has a clear agenda demanding Kurdish autonomy, to counter Erdoğan’s PKK-based propaganda.
“As long as Qandil does not lay down arms, our İHAs and SİHAs together will rain down on them with missiles,” Yavaş said, referring to Turkey’s armed and unarmed drones.
“The national security policies of the state does not change,” he said, adding that both the United States and Russia have been conducting operations on the Turkish border with Syria.
The mayor of Ankara accused foreign nations of training the PKK fighters, as well as the Kurdish People’s Protection Forces (YPG) in Syria, which Turkey sees as an extension of the PKK.
“As long as those powers continue to do so, Turkey will not only use drones, but all of its modernised weapons that will be given to the Turkish military,” Yavaş said.
Akşener has also stepped up her rhetoric on the PKK over the past week.
The politician opposed any effort to normalise the PKK on Tuesday during a speech in Ankara for the Turkism Day celebrations of nationalist groups.
“The PKK is an armed organisation, it is an organisation that wants to divide the country and an organisation all governments should struggle against,” she said.