Devlet Bahçeli, chairman of the government-allied Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), renewed his criticism of the Peoples’ Equality and Democracy Party (DEM), an opposition party with links to the PKK terrorist group, and called on the authorities to stop the Finance Ministry’s support to the DEM party.
“DEM will receive 940 million TL ($27.69 million) from the Republic of Turkey. This should stop and this fund should benefit the families of the martyrs instead,” he said in a written statement on Wednesday, referring to the victims of PKK terrorism.
The DEM party is a successor to the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), which later changed its name to the Green Left Party (YSP). It was founded by the same cadres from both parties, who often resort to name changes to avoid closure by the judicial authorities due to their links with the PKK.
All three parties follow the example of several other parties that emerged in the 1990s when the terror group was seeking legitimacy. Although they positioned themselves as left-wing parties (just like the terror group, which calls itself the Kurdistan Workers’ Party), the parties were the only political organizations openly linked to the terror group. The former co-chairs of the HDP and most members of their successors have been imprisoned for terror propaganda and inciting unrest across Turkey.
Bahçeli said Turkey has been fighting terrorism for 40 years and that this fight costs the country about $2.5 trillion.
“It is very clear that the terrorist group controlled by imperialism is committing crimes against humanity and attacking the very existence of Turkey and the Turkish people. Combating terrorism requires an integrated approach and it is not enough to stop supporting the terrorist group by simply neutralising armed thugs roaming the mountains,” he said.
“As long as these figures who propagate terrorism and separatism in the Grand National Assembly of Turkey remain in power, this cycle of bloodshed will not end,” he said.
Bahçeli claimed that the political supporters of the traitors, who had been chased over the mountains and could no longer find protection beyond the Turkish borders, were becoming increasingly aggressive.
The DEM party currently has 57 seats in parliament. “They cost the state treasury 116.2 million TL annually,” Bahçeli said, stressing that this figure has increased due to the salaries of DEM party’s advisers and other staff in parliament. He said the money the state pays to the DEM party is like “donating ammunition and bombs to the terrorist group.”
“This year, DEM will receive about 940 million TL from the state it considers an enemy,” he added.
Bahçeli also called on the authorities to summon DEM party MPs to court after immediately deciding on their pending cases related to aiding the terror group and lifting their immunity. He also renewed his criticism of the Constitutional Court for delaying the termination of cases against the PKK-affiliated parties, as he said earlier.
“Either the court’s statutes must be restructured or the court must be closed,” Bahçeli said.
