Davutoglu to Erdogan and His Ally: You are the cause of the country’s calamities

Ahmet Davutoglu, the head of Turkey’s opposition Future Party, has launched an attack on Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s regime against the backdrop of the situation in the country.

Opposition newspaper Sozcu reported Sunday that the former prime minister attacked Erdogan during his participation in a conference for his party in the west of the country.

Davutoglu sent a strongly worded message to Erdogan and his ally Devlet Bahceli, head of the opposition Nationalist Movement.

Addressing both Erdogan and his ally, he said: “Bahceli, you can’t run away. You are second in charge of the calamities we are experiencing today. You are responsible for the corrupt. They cannot escape.”

He added: “People will continue to question the whereabouts of the central bank’s $128 billion reserves. You can’t escape this. You can’t make people forget what money laundering gangs do.”

Republican People’s Party deputies had questioned the sale of $128.3 billion (1.04 trillion Turkish lira) of central bank reserves through Turkish state banks in 2019 and 2020, during the tenure of former Treasury and Finance Minister Berat Albayrak, and how the sales were managed.

The Turkish opposition has been pursuing Erdogan for months to determine the fate of the money, which evaporated in just eight months.

Davutoglu continued: “He thinks that the state’s survival is limited to him. I’m sorry, Mr. Bahceli. The state’s survival belongs to the people of this country, not to anyone.”

He added that “Bahceli personality has a cold, frowning face, his words are full of hate, and he believes that harsh words are politics.”

Davutoglu’s attack on Erdogan’s ally came against the backdrop of Bahçı’s recent remarks attacking him.

In response, Davutoglu reiterated his statements to the president’s ally: ”I am not Recep Tayyip Erdogan so that you will tell me what to do. No one can give me orders.”