Rabia Burçe Tunga, who was a candidate for nomination for the Republican People's Party (CHP) in Istanbul in the Nov. 1 elections, recently claimed that the CHP has turned into an Alevi party. Alevis are a religious minority in Turkey. She said that although she had received many votes as a candidate for nomination in the party elections, she could not be a deputy candidate mostly because of party preferences concerning religious identity. She also claimed: "Because of my religious identity I was unable to run as a candidate for the November elections. The CHP administration is trying to change the party that was established by Atatürk into a narrow-minded party. Rather than a secular party, the CHP has recently become an Alevi association."
Meanwhile, with the CHP administration keeping silent about the BuzGate scandal, Tunga has said that it led to her resignation process. She added: "In addition to this identity discrimination, the CHP went into intra-party turmoil following the June 7 elections due to the BuzGate scandal, and as party members we wanted to suspend any party member who was a part of this scandal. However, instead of suspending these people, the party administration protected those members and made them deputy candidates for the November elections. So I showed my reaction against the party administration with my resignation."
BuzGate is a scandal that topped local news after an article in the Akıt daily after the June 7 election. CHP Istanbul Deputy Gamze Akkuş İlgezdi and her husband, Battal İlgezdi, the mayor of the Istanbul district of Ataşehir, are entangled in a scandal over their purchase of more than a dozen apartments worth millions of lira in two skyscrapers in Istanbul, a purchase apparently not affordable with their modest means. The whole affair is called "BuzGate" by the media after the name of one of the skyscrapers.
