Turkey Update – HÜDA-PAR & more – 9th May 2023

A hostile election atmosphere was prominent, just like last week’s

On Wednesday the 3rd, a group of people attacked the election stand of the Free Cause Party, or HÜDA-PAR, in the city of Trabzon. The Hüda-par is the ruling party’s latest ally and people say that it’s the political branch of the Hizbullah, a domestic terrorist organization. Even if it doesn’t have ties to the organization, the party’s ideology, radical Islamism, caused controversy. The ruling Justice and Development Party, or AKP, received criticism for the alleged alliance with the Hüda-Par. People from within the AKP also criticized them.

The next day, on Thursday the 4th, the party reopened its stand. However, the public attacked it once again and took down the posters, including one with Erdoğan’s face on it. People shouted nationalistic slogans and said that ‘terrorists were not welcome’ in Trabzon. Some reported that there were a lot of police officers guarding the stand and they intervened to disperse the crowd. Reportedly, one person asked the city’s chief police officer if they would protect the People’s Democratic Party, or HDP’s stand like they were protecting the Hüda-Par. He pointed out that the Trabzon people reacted similarly to the HDP before, but no police had intervened. Similar to the Hüda-Par, people have been saying that HDP is the political branch of the PKK, which Turkey deems a terrorist organization. What’s different is, the HDP doesn’t support the ruling bloc, but the opposition. In other words, the HDP and Hüda-Par are more or less the same in the eyes of the people. Both are associated with terrorist organizations in the public eye, but it's a popular and acceptable thing to attack the HDP, an opposition party, whereas Hüda-par is protected by the government.

Speaking of double standards…

On Tuesday the 2nd, İlhan Taşçı and Tuncay Keser, both members of the Turkish Radio and Television Supreme Council, or RTÜK, and the main opposition Republican People’s Party, released a report on the national TV channel, known as TRT, about the coverage of parties’ election rallies in April. The report stated that the TRT covered Erdoğan’s speeches for a total of thirty-two hours, whereas the main opposition candidate Kılıçdaroğlu only got thirty-two minutes of screen time.

The opposition slammed the RTÜK for not monitoring the national TV’s broadcasts and allowing it to favor the ruling party. It said that the ruling bloc was clearly using public resources and funds to carry out its election campaign and turned the TRT and RTÜK into its personal ‘PR firm’.

On that,

As a part of the election program, the TRT broadcasts propaganda speeches of presidential candidates and parties. On Sunday the 7th, it aired the first round of speeches. Kılıçdaroğlu, Muharrem İnce and Sinan Oğan, all opposition candidates, chose to use their time on national TV to call out TRT for tailoring their broadcasting to make the ruling block look good. Kılıçdaroğlu said that the TRT was keeping the truth from the public, and listed a number of news that TRT failed to share with the public. He said ‘Does the TRT share the news of millions of people who have to stay in the dark because they can’t pay their electric bills? Did it share the cries of those in the earthquake zone who had to watch their loved ones die slowly under the collapsed buildings because there weren’t enough rescue teams?’

Moving on…

On Sunday the 7th, Ekrem İmamoğlu, the mayor of İstanbul and the vice president candidate, planned to hold a rally in Erzurum. However, the mayor of the city filled the place where he would have the rally with city buses in an attempt to prevent the rally. The municipality later removed the buses following the public backlash.

Later on, İmamoğlu held his rally. However, he had to cut the meeting short because a group of people attacked his tour bus with stones. İmamoğlu was giving his speech at the top of the bus, so the attack was probably aimed at him. A lot of people were injured in the attack, including a child. İmamoğlu slammed the security forces, the mayor and the governor of Erzurum for not intervening while people were getting injured, and said that he would file a criminal complaint against them. He also called this attack a provocation. Whereas, Süleyman Soylu, the interior minister claimed that İmamoğlu organized the attack himself.

The hostile behavior towards the opposition gained momentum as the election neared…

On Saturday the 6th, Devlet Bahçeli, the head of the ruling alliance the Nationalist People’s Party, made death threats at the opposition. He said, once again, that the main opposition, the Republican People’s Party, or CHP, and its allies would shut down the Religious Affairs Directorate, even though the parties denied the claims,and he added that a ‘sad ending’ was awaiting them on the election day. He further said that after the election the CHP and its allies would either get ‘aggravated life sentences, or a bullet to their bodies.’

Following all this hostility, the line ‘let’s finish this in the first round’ has become a slogan for the opposition, referring to how if no candidate gets over 50% of the votes, the country will have to hold a second election between the two candidates who got the highest votes.

This is one side of the coin. On the other side, the foreign minister accuses the opposition of insulting the government and using hostile rhetoric towards them.

Let’s move on to some election promises…

In one of his famous Twitter videos, Kılıçdaroğlu vowed to increase the lowest civil servant salary to twice the amount of minimum wage, around twenty thousand liras, or one thousand US Dollars.

He also talked about the working hours of the police, saying that they work up to 250 hours a month. he added that these long working hours increase police suicides.

On the other hand, Erdoğan also talked about the minimum pension amount, saying that the government would make a regulation regarding the amount ‘right after the election’

Let’s get back to Süleyman Soylu for a moment…

On Sunday the 7th, the Shiftdelete, a famous youtube channel that makes videos on technology had Soylu as a guest in one of his videos. In the video, the two of them toured Istanbul in a TOGG car, the first electronic domestic car that the government has been actively promoting for the last few weeks. During the tour, Soylu talked about other technologies that the interior ministry developed. He showed an app named Who, or ‘Kim’ in Turkish, that identifies people and shows their personal information from a photograph. He even demonstrated the app and took a picture of the show host. All of his information showed up on the screen.

ic data on its citizens since: 2017

Moving on to the economy…

In the last eight weeks, the Central bank has sold over a hundred tons of its gold reserves. Experts believe that the bank is supplying the country’s gold demand through its reserves instead of importing it.

Aaaand that's it for this week! Have you checked our website? Over there you can find more about us, how to contact us, and support us. Link to it in the show notes!

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