Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu opens fire on Erdoğan’s ally… What’s the story?

Republican People’s Party Chairman and Turkish opposition leader Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu has lashed out at the head of the Nationalist Movement Party and ally of Turkish President Devlet Bahçeli over his statements on the expiry of a proposal to draft a new constitution for the country.

Kılıçdaroğlu said : “We have not seen the text (the draft constitution Devlet Bahçeli  talked about), but I think it will abolish the SCC, maybe it will abolish the Supreme Court, the (presidential) palace is already making the decision.”

In an interview with Yeni Chagh newspaper yesterday, he pointed out that the state is now being run by directives issued by the Ministry of Interior, which has made state institutions unreliable by the people. He added : “State institutions have become unreliable, no one trusts the judiciary, do you trust parliament?”.

 He also stressed that Turkey’s agenda today is poverty and subsistence, adding that “Turkey’s real agenda is livelihood, there is extreme poverty, not ordinary poverty.”

Earlier yesterday, Devlet Bahçeli confirmed that his party had completed a 100-article draft constitution that would “institutionalize the presidential system.”

Kılıçdaroğlu had hinted that he might be the candidate of the opposition forces to compete with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan for the presidency.

The People’s Alliance, which is made up of the Justice and Development Party and the Nationalist Movement, has announced that President Erdoğan will be their candidate in the next presidential elections, scheduled for 2023.