Opposition Zoom Meatng Leaked & more– 25th July 2023

Merhaba from Keswick Village! This is the Rorshok Turkey Update from the 25th of July twenty twenty-three A quick summary of what's going down in Turkey.

Let’s kick off this edition with some news on politics…

Last Tuesday the 18th, a person who hasn’t been identified yet, recorded and leaked a fourteen-minute-long video showing a Zoom meeting between politicians from the main opposition, the Republican People’s Party or CHP. Ekrem İmamoğlu, the mayor of İstanbul, Özgür Özel, the party’s parliamentary group leader, and other executive members of the party were on the call. In the meeting, they discussed the party’s need for change after their defeat in the presidential elections against Erdoğan, implying a change of party leader. They also made plans to launch a petition to summon the party’s assembly for an extraordinary meeting. The person who shared the video described it as a secret meeting to plan a coup, and said that the participants were betraying Kılıçdaroğlu.

İmamoğlu said that the meeting was no secret and that he held around 200 meetings like the one leaked since the elections. He also added that there was nothing more ordinary than discussing the party’s issues with the party executives. However, according to insiders, Kılıçdaroğlu reportedly called the meeting ‘unacceptable’. One insider also said that Kılıçdaroğlu wanted to keep the conflict away from the public eye and asked the party officials not to comment on it.

On that note…

Kılıçdaroğlu has received a lot of criticism following his loss in the elections, and many people have been demanding that he step down from his position as the leader of the CHP, saying that he disappointed the country. However, he doesn’t think the election results reflect a failure. He addressed the criticism saying that 48% of the country voted for him, and the ruling Justice and Development Party’s votes dropped drastically in the parliamentary elections.

He also said that the ruling party lied and made black propaganda against them, and if it hadn’t been for that he would have won the elections.

He admitted that his party wasn’t very active in small villages and so their votes were low in rural areas. He also said that people who live in the rural parts of the country didn’t feel the weight of the inflation as much as those living in the city, and his party couldn’t reach them and tell them about the problems the country was facing.

He also mentioned the recent tax increases and said that many of Erdoğan’s supporters turned against him as his promise of welfare during the elections turned out to be bogus. He believes that if the country had the elections under these conditions, he would win. With Kılıçdaroğlu, there seems to be a lot of would have and could haves, and not enough achievements.

Speaking of tax increases…

The Union of Turkey’s bar associations filed a lawsuit to reverse the recent hikes in value-added and consumption taxes.

It’s been a busy week for the opposition. This week, Ümit Özdağ, the head of the Victory Party, a nationalist party notorious for its anti-refugee, and oftentimes racist ideology revealed that Kılıçdaroğlu agreed to hand over three ministries to the Victory Party in exchange for its support in the second round of the elections in May. To this, Kılıçdaroğlu said that it wouldn’t be right to talk about the protocol, as he signed it with Özdağ and it’s supposed to be private, adding that even the CHP executives weren’t aware of the agreement.

Following this, the spokesperson for the Future Party, a member of the Nation’s Alliance that supported Kılıçdaroğlu in the elections, said that he was glad Kılıçdaroğlu lost the elections. He said he wouldn’t want to ‘condemn’ the country to Ümit Özdağ, as he leads a separatist ideology, and that goes against what the opposition stood for in the elections. He slammed Kılıçdaroğlu for his agreement with Özdağ, and the Future party also said that Kılıçdaroğlu lacked political and moral virtue.

However, Kılıçdaroğlu defended his actions. He slammed the Future Party for not contributing to the election campaign and said that the lack of action from his allies pushed him to make a deal with Özdağ in order to get more votes.

Still on the CHP…

In an interview with Canan Kaftancıoğlu, a prominent opposition journalist, the head of the party’s İstanbul branch revealed that she’ll leave her position in a month. Prior to the election, a court banned her from being involved in politics after she was convicted of insulting the president and the Republic of Turkey. She stayed on duty nevertheless. She said that she was relieved she was leaving her post as the CHP had tired her.

During the elections, a graphic designer was arrested and charged for insulting the president over a few stickers he designed that read ‘Is this expensive? thank Erdoğan.’ He had shared the design on social media and some people printed them and stuck them on goods in markets. On Monday the 24th, he revealed on Twitter that he was acquitted of the charge. He tweeted: “Apparently, it’s not a crime to design stickers and say ‘Is this expensive? Thank Erdoğan.” with a smiley face.

Moving on…

A prosecutor demanded that Faruk Fatih Özer, the founder of Thodex, a cryptocurrency exchange, spend over forty thousand years in prison. Özer has been charged with money laundering, aggravated fraud, and creating a criminal organization. The judge hasn’t reached a verdict yet.

Back in twenty twenty-one, Özer fled the country with two billion US Dollars after he abruptly shut down his company’s website, defrauding thousands of his customers. Last year, the local police arrested him in Albania. The country sent him back to Turkey earlier in April. He’s been under arrest since.

In other news, on Friday the 21st, the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry addressed the allegations on social media about carcinogenic antibiotics found on eggs exported to Taiwan and said that the ministry launched an investigation into it. In a written statement, the ministry said that the Taiwanese government hasn't contacted the ministry about such an issue, but they are still looking into it as it affects public health. It added that the ministry banned the use of the antibiotic, known as nitrofuran, in food production.

On that note about food safety…

Prof. Dr. Argun Akif Özak, a researcher studying parasites on fish, found salmon louse on Norwegian salmon sold in markets. Salmon louse is a type of parasite local to northern seas. Experts say that if the parasite increases in number, it may cause mass death in fish. They further point out that the country should be more careful when importing live fish, as they may carry different bacteria and parasites that might affect the local fish production as well. Özkan reports that he hasn’t detected the salmon louse on Turkish salmon yet.

Let’s talk about social media…

Turkey’s Information and Communication Technologies Authority, or BTK, announced on Monday the 21st that it banned advertising on Twitter. The authority said the ban was put in place because Twitter didn’t appoint a legal representative in the country. It added that if the app doesn’t appoint a representative in three months, the country will decrease the app’s bandwidth by 50%, meaning it’ll slow down the app. If they do not follow BTK’s directive, then the bandwidth will decrease by 90%. Essentially, it will block access to the platform.

Turkey has been experiencing a heatwave for the past couple of weeks, and the following story seems to sum up the extreme heat quite nicely…

A couple of citizens opened up a stand in the southern city of Adana to commemorate the 121st anniversary of the invention of the air conditioner and set up a banner that said "We pay homage to Willis Haviland Carrier, the inventor of air conditioning, on this hot day”. They also gave away sweets in his honor, a traditional way to commemorate a deceased person. Speaking to a news agency, they said that life wouldn’t be possible without A/C in the city, where the temperature has surpassed forty degrees Celsius, or 104 degrees Fahrenheit.

Aaaaand that’s it for this week! Thanks for joining us!

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