Bahçeli Says PM Provoked Gezi Park Chaos

The chairman of the opposition Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), Devlet Bahçeli, said on Tuesday that Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and his government had provoked recent turmoil linked to İstanbul's Gezi Park.



The park is the center of a two-week-old movement against Erdoğan that has seen thousands of Turks taking to the streets to protest what they see as an authoritarian style of government.



At his party's weekly meeting, Bahçeli said that inconsistent statements, steps forward and backward, and a mixed record of conciliatory, defiant and condescending attitudes on the part of the prime minister had moved Turkey toward chaos. "Prime Minister Erdoğan considered the expression of the most natural rights and expectations as a plot against himself," Bahçeli said.



Arguing that the territorial integrity of Turkey was at risk, Bahçeli said that "entire groups who want the partition of Turkey and fight against [the unity] of Turkey have been mobilized, became stronger and resisted [the state]."



Directly challenging the prime minister, Bahçeli said that Erdoğan would be held to account both in this world and the next if he gave the PKK and the İmralı murderer [jailed PKK leader Abdullah Öcalan] a blank check regarding so-called North Kurdistan, opened space for political separationists and made promises that would result in the destruction of Turkey and the Turkish nation.



"We were not joking when we said that the Nationalist Movement has not said its final word," Bahçeli said, referring to previous comments he made about the settlement process. Bahçeli urged Erdoğan to "be smart."



'North Kurdistan' conference is betrayal of Turkey



According to Bahçeli, separatists upped their rhetoric with threatening statements while the whole of Turkey was focused on Gezi Park.



"Last weekend in Diyarbakır a scandal took place under the name of the 'North Kurdistan Unity and Solution Conference'. The PKK and separatists have already divided Turkey in their minds and shaped the boundaries of East, West, North and South Kurdistan," Bahçeli said, adding that Erdoğan should be watching the PKK, the İmralı murderer and those gathered in Diyarbakır -- instead of labeling innocent citizens terrorists.



Using the words "North Kurdistan" to refer to land inside Turkey in the name of the conference was a betrayal, he said. He went on to call for the ruling AK Party to clarify its role in that betrayal.



Bahçeli also said the MHP banners that appeared at an AK Party rally in Ankara on Saturday were a clear political trick, as none of his comrades would have participated in the rally.



(Cihan/Today's Zaman)