Ahmet Şık, a lawmaker for the Workers’ Party of Turkey (TİP) on Tuesday accused Devlet Bahçeli, the leader of the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), of trying to hide the crimes of the government under the Turkish flag.
Tensions escalated in Turkish politics on Tuesday, after Bahçeli, the far-right ally of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, delivered an angry speech to his parliamentary group.
Şık, a former journalist and an outspoken politician, was one of the names Bahçeli put on his target board.
Bahçeli condemned Şık for saying that it is “legitimate to be an enemy of the state”, in the wake of the state institution’s grave failure in responding to the earthquake disaster that affected 10 southern provinces in the country on 6 February.
Bahçeli called Şık “a lawmaker of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) quota”, as he was elected from the pro-Kurdish People’s Democratic Party (HDP) list in 2018 elections. The lawmaker afterwards resigned from the HDP and joined TİP.
The far-right leader said Şık had turned a new page of animosity against the nation and the state.
“At this stage we have arrived, it is a subject of honour and security for the state and the law to chuck this habitual enemy out of the TBMM,” Bahçeli said, referring to the Turkish parliament.
Şık replied to Bahçeli on Twitter. “The Palace Regime, a criminal organisation masked as political parties, which has been using all state institutions it has captured to treat the people as enemies, which leaves its citizens to death, is attempting to hide all its crimes and cover up all its sins and hide them with religion,” he said.
Meanwhile Bahçeli also targeted other opposition parties accusing them of aligning with the HDP by criticising the single-man rule and arguing that state institutions have rotted.
The politician also targeted Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, the leader of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP). Following the government’s attempt to block the aid efforts of the CHP-led metropolitan municipalities of İstanbul and Ankara in the earthquake-hit area, Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu attempted to send supplies to those in need, and called on the government to come and arrest him if they really seek to block such aid.
