In relation to the Sedat Peker confessions, Sezai Temelli, former co-chair of the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) and HDP’s MP for Van (Wan) shared his evaluations with MA regarding the political conjunture in Turkey after the 7th June 2015 general elections when Turkey’s president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan suffered his biggest setback since 2002 and says he is not at all surprised by the allegations of the Turkish mafia boss.
As voters denied his ruling party a parliamentary majority for the first time in 7 June 2015, the HDP’s victory of taking more than 12% of the votes denied Erdoğan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) its majority.
“We clearly learned and observed after the 7th June that the codes of this state have not been designed to evolve into a pluralistic, democratic and secular regime in Turkey,” he said. “After 2015, we are once again confronted with the reality of the state. We are confronted with war and the war is ongoing,”
“We have seen that the state and the ruling power have launched a total onslaught in order to erase the memory of this process.”
Temelli explained that these attacks have been against all the structures in democratic politics and “it also meant to launch once more the war against the Kurds.”
Commenting on the allegations of Turkish mafia boss Sedat Peker, Temelli shared his view that there has always been mafia-state links in Turkey.
“Actually there is nothing surprising about his statements. Because there has always been mafia-state relations in the tradition of Turkish politics. And it is the state itself, which organises the mafia-state relations,” he said.
“Therefore we are not simply talking about some streets gangs. This is an organised crime group, but who organises this, is the state. Since 2010s, the [Turkish] state conducted its expansionist policies in the Middle East with Islamist organisations.”
Temelli finally shared his opinion that in the face of all these bitter truths, the peoples of Turkey have no option but to raise a joint struggle.
“We need to raise the struggle against fascism,” he said. “Just like we say in our motto, ‘shoulder by shoulder against fascism’, we need to come together and struggle all together.”
