The deputy chair and spokesperson of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AK Party) dismissed the opposition’s call for an early election.
Addressing the party’s congress in the southern province of Adana on Sunday, Ömer Çelik said the opposition would undoubtedly be defeated in the first instance of an election but Türkiye had no agenda of an early election.
The main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) is the proponent of early election calls. The party’s leader Özgür Özel told reporters last Friday they demanded an immediate election, four years before the scheduled presidential vote. Özel has claimed that the government was planning a constitutional amendment for extending incumbent President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s tenure before urging Erdoğan to take the country to an early election where the president can compete again. The CHP leader was confident of a CHP victory in the next election, stating that they already won the local election. the CHP took some AK Party strongholds and retained mayoral seats in big cities including Istanbul and the capital Ankara in the March 31 municipal elections, months after Özel’s predecessor Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu lost the general election to Erdoğan.
Çelik told fellow AK Party members that the opposition was repeatedly defeated in general elections but turned to early election calls “every time they are engaged in their own infighting,” he said. Media outlets reported earlier that Kılıçdaroğlu was seeking to unseat Özel through another intraparty election after Özel replaced him in an election last November. The CHP dismissed reports but Kılıçdaroğlu often criticizes the current administration, especially because of a thaw between the CHP and AK Party after the municipal vote.
The AK Party spokesperson said they would continue on their path to fulfill the ambitions of the country and realize new projects. “The opposition think they can silence, stop us. They did this again recently at Parliament but you can’t stop the AK Party, People’s Alliance (which the party formed with Nationalist Movement Party or MHP),” he said. Several CHP lawmakers violently harassed Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya while the latter was trying to enter the venue of the parliamentary budget committee for his ministry’s budget talks last week in Ankara. The AK Party has condemned the violent incident it branded as “banditry.”