The ruling Justice and Development Party (AK Party) decried the violent harassment of Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya, who was pushed and shoved by opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) lawmakers Wednesday.
Yerlikaya was trying to enter a chamber of Parliament in the capital Ankara to attend budget talks on his ministry when CHP officials confronted him. In moments captured on camera, Yerlikaya is seen being pushed away by CHP members and in one moment, almost put in a chokehold. Minutes later, he managed to make it into the venue, barely escaping the unfolding stampede.
AK Party spokesperson Ömer Çelik described the scene as “barbaric thuggery” while the party’s deputy group chair at Parliament Özlem Zengin said Yerlikaya was subject to “disrespect to nation’s will.”
The CHP has been overtly critical of Yerlikaya, especially after a trustee was appointed in place of Ahmet Özer, a mayor of the party for Istanbul’s Esenyurt district. Özer was detained on charges of links to the PKK terrorist group. After his detention, more trustee appointments followed, this time against PKK-linked mayors of the Peoples’ Equality and Democracy Party (DEM Party), an ally of the CHP.
Yerlikaya was accompanied to the meeting room by Mehmet Muş, who heads the budget committee of Parliament. Muş himself complained that CHP lawmakers “set up a barricade” to the room. Lawmakers confronting Yerlikaya claimed that the minister rejected their requests for a private meeting, while Muş told reporters that he would gladly host lawmakers and Yerlikaya in his own room at Parliament. Muş was forced to pause budget talks when the opposition lawmakers engaged in another quarrel at the venue with AK Party lawmakers.
After he was finally seated into the budget talks venue, Yerlikaya said they were certainly open to criticism but lawmakers should adhere to democracy. He called on lawmakers to stick to criticism instead of “defamation” when they claimed the minister wiretapped their rooms at Parliament.
The incident also drew the ire of the AK Party ally Nationalist Movement Party (MHP). The MHP’s deputy parliamentary group chair, Erkan Akçay, said they strongly condemned CHP members’ acts and invited them “to stick to laws and protocols of Parliament.”
“The CHP almost acted like those on July 15,” he said, referring to the 2016 coup attempt in which Parliament was bombed by putschists.
