Davutoğlu lambasts alleged alliance between CHP and Gülenists

Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu has lambasted the main opposition Republican People's Party's (CHP) alleged alliance with the Gülen Movement, which infiltrated key state institutions with an aim to overthrow the government.

In his speech over the weekend at the fifth ordinary province congress in the southern city of Mersin, Davutoğlu said the CHP always takes its power by collaborating with coup plotters and parallel states within the state - a term used in Turkey to define movements such as Gülen's - and various state authorities, such as the military or the judiciary that exerted undue influence over politics in the past.

Giving a reminder of CHP İzmir deputy Birgül Ayman Güler's remarks that the CHP has been failing since its cooperation with the Gülen Movement, Davutoğlu said that the CHP does not give hope to the nation and it has lost trust both in itself and the nation.

The Gülen Movement is a transnational movement accused of wiretapping thousands of people, including Turkish government officials, encrypting phones and infiltrating state institutions with the aim of overthrowing the government.

Davutoğlu also touched on the internal conflict within the CHP, revealed when Istanbul's Şişli district Mayor Hayri İnönü was threatened by former Şişli Mayor Mustafa Sarıgül, who served the district for years, He said that during the elections Sarıgül tried to build a tutelage within Şişli, which is considered a fortress of the CHP, and took its power from the mafia organizations while running the district.

Davutoğlu asserted that even CHP leader Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu knows that there is no hope for the CHP to come to power in the upcoming elections. Giving the conflict in Şişli as an example, Davutoğlu questioned how they would run the entire country while they cause a stir in a single district.

The Public Prosecutor of Istanbul's Counterterrorism Department has launched a probe on its own initiative to investigate the claims of Nazlı İnönü – the wife of Şişli's mayor – about Sarıgül, who allegedly threatened İnönü and his family by intimidation through a mafia. According to Hayri İnönü, Sarıgül and his son, who served as the deputy mayor of Şişli prior to the crises, threatened him. İnönü claimed Sarıgül had said that "nobody will be able to find their corpses or bones" when the two met on November 5.

Emphasizing that President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan took the presidential post from former President Abdullah Gül, who was one of the founders of the Justice and Development Party (AK Party), and he himself took the prime ministry post from Erdoğan, Davutoğlu said, "Did you see a single instance of rudeness, one little mistake [in the transition process]? Our [party] differences come from our commitment to our cause."

The prime minister added that while the AK Party continues to work for the upcoming election, some circles have tried to conspire against the ruling party behind closed doors, as they had attempted in the March 30 local elections.