Devlet Bahçeli, chair of government ally Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), renewed his criticism of the Peoples' Equality and Democracy Party (DEM Party), an opposition party linked to the PKK terrorist group, and urged authorities to stop Treasury aid to the DEM Party.
“DEM will receive TL 940 million ($27.69 million) from the Republic of Türkiye. This should stop and this fund should be allocated for families of martyrs instead,” he said in a written statement on Wednesday, referring to victims of PKK terrorism.
The DEM Party is a successor of the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), which later changed its name to the Green Left Party (YSP). It was founded by the same cadres of two parties who often resort to name-changing to avoid a shutdown by judicial authorities over its links to the PKK.
All three parties follow in the footsteps of several others, which emerged in the 1990s as the terrorist group sought legitimacy. Though they positioned themselves as left-wing parties (just like the terrorist group, which is self-styled as the Kurdistan Workers’ Party), the parties have been the only political entities openly aligned with the terrorist group. The HDP’s former co-chairs and most members of its successors have been jailed for terrorism propaganda and inciting riots across Türkiye.
Bahçeli said Türkiye has been fighting terrorism for 40 years and it costs the country about $2.5 trillion.
“It is crystal clear that the terrorist group, remotely controlled by imperialism, commits crimes against humanity and attacks the very existence of Türkiye and the Turkish nation. Counterterrorism requires an integrated approach and it is insufficient to end support for the terrorist group by simply neutralizing armed thugs roaming the mountains,” he said.
“As long as those figures making terrorism and separatism propaganda at the Turkish Grand National Assembly prevail, this cycle of bloodshed will not end,” he said.
Bahçeli claimed that political supporters of traitors who chased away across the mountains and could not find shelter anymore beyond the borders of Türkiye were becoming more aggressive.
The DEM Party currently has 57 seats in Parliament. “They cost TL 116.2 million to the Treasury yearly,” Bahçeli said, highlighting that this number increased with salaries paid to advisers and other staff of the DEM Party at Parliament. He said the money paid to the DEM Party by the state is like “donating munitions and bombs to the terrorist group.”
“This year, DEM will obtain about TL 940 million from the state it views as an enemy,” he added.
Bahçeli also called authorities to summon DEM Party lawmakers to the court after immediately deciding upon their pending cases related to aiding and abetting the terrorist group and lifting their immunity. He also renewed his criticism of the Constitutional Court over what he earlier called delaying closure cases regarding the PKK-linked parties.
“Its statute should either be restructured, or this court should be shut down,” Bahçeli said.
