Özgür Özel apologized for the city they lost in the March 31 elections.

CHP General Chairman Özgür Özel visited Osmaniye and Hatay. After his visits in Osmaniye, Özel held a public meeting in the Defne district of Hatay. He was accompanied by MYK members, deputies, and district mayors.

Highlights from Özel's speech are as follows; "Twenty months after the great pain, we are once again face to face, hand in hand, shoulder to shoulder in Hatay with you. We have our pains, our problems, a city that needs to be revived, and a struggle that we must face and succeed together. We went through a local election process. On the evening of the local election, we achieved great success in Turkey, with CHP becoming the first party after 47 years, serving 65% of the Turkish population, and gaining the authority to manage 78% of the economy and 92% of tourism cities. That night was a great success, but there was also a significant wound within us. That was the Hatay Metropolitan Municipality.

"I APOLOGIZE TO ALL THE BEAUTIFUL PEOPLE IN HATAY"

Despite our best efforts to avoid mistakes during that process, unfortunately, we made errors, we had shortcomings, and we went through processes from which we needed to learn. We witnessed very malicious attacks and injustices, but I set all of that aside and say that for Hatay, which Gazi Mustafa Kemal Atatürk referred to as 'my personal matter,' despite the threats it faced, they said, 'If Ankara and this place do not unite, services will not come.' They openly turned their discrimination into threats. But setting aside all excuses and justifications, I sincerely apologize to all the beautiful people in Hatay for not winning Hatay.

From that day to today, we are working with all our might to ensure that we do not lose Hatay again, to not leave Hatay vulnerable to threats and blackmail, and to regain this city. The ministers of our shadow cabinet, along with many of our friends and deputies from Hatay, came and went in teams, preparing their reports. Tomorrow, we will hold the official MYK meeting of CHP in Hatay, and from now on, both I and my deputies and managers will continue the struggle for Hatay without leaving it empty for a minute, without leaving it alone.

"WE WANT TO MAKE CHP THE FIRST PARTY IN HATAY"

We love Hatay, we will embrace Hatay, we will be together with Hatay. We are in a time when standing separately and continuing the struggle separately does not yield results. We want unity, we want togetherness, and we want to make CHP the first party in Hatay with a great struggle together. On February 6, we experienced great losses in the earthquake, but one of the cities where we experienced the greatest losses and destruction, and unfortunately the most neglected, was Hatay. They did not come at first, they did not hear, they did not help us. Unfortunately, in the search and rescue efforts that started very late, they always left Hatay one step, two steps, three steps behind. Later, they said that Hatay would be revived along with other cities, saying, 'Everyone will return to their homes within a year,' deceiving 10 cities and Hatay to get votes, but let alone a year, at the end of 20 months -almost two years- they have only provided 11,366 of the 254,000 houses they promised to Hatay. The rate is 4%. 96% are in tents, containers, or in exile. Not in their homes, outside their homes, far from their homes. And they say, 'We are not discriminating.' They also say, 'Do not politicize this,' but they politicize even the mosque, let alone the earthquake housing.

"THE TENDER FOR THE GRAND MOSQUE HAS BEEN MADE BUT NO NAIL HAS BEEN DRIVEN"

As you know, while our homes and workplaces were destroyed in the earthquake, places of worship were also destroyed and damaged. We said, 'The state should take care of the places of worship of all religions.' On February 7, we warned the relevant ministry, the government, and AFAD. 'Protect these places. Hatay is not like other places. If a mosaic is lost, it cannot be restored with billions,' we said. And we closely followed the process. During this time, important steps of solidarity were taken. For example, Hatay's Grand Mosque, the Bursa Metropolitan Municipality said, 'We will build the Grand Mosque.' We were quite pleased, we did not say 'no,' we said 'do it.' Then the elections took place, and with the people's preference, we won Bursa. When Mustafa Bozbey came, he saw and examined the Grand Mosque project. In September 2023, they made the tender for this, gave it to a contractor, but no nail has been driven until it reached my president.

My president examined it and then worked on the time that has passed until today. The problem is that here, those who say, 'While the Grand Mosque was being built under the AK Party, it is not being built under the CHP,' he showed that we have done everything, we have no debt to the contractor, but the science board has not signed the project. They first made a promise, then denied it, but today it has come to light with all the documents. In the case of the Grand Mosque and all the promises we made to Hatay, we clearly state that whoever makes a promise to Hatay, the promise is ours, and it will be fulfilled."