Zekeriya Yapıcıoğlu, chair of the Free Cause Party (HÜDA-PAR), a political arm of the Kurdish Hizbullah and a close ally of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), has expressed support for an AKP member who said a new state is being founded by leader Turkish President Tayyip Erdoğan.
Yapıcıoğlu referred to a radical need for paradigm change in the government structure and said the nation was divided and that a significant part of it had been labelled as an enemy under the previous government structure.
According to Yapıcıoğlu, the previous political structure was paranoid in that they believed precautions have be taken against certain groups within the nation.
It cannot go on like this, said Yapıcıoğlu.
“Now we are founding a new state. Like it or not, the founding leader of this new state is Tayyip Erdoğan,” said Ayhan Oğan, a former member of the Central Decision and Administration Board (MKYK) of the AKP, during a program aired by CNN Türk on Thursday evening.
AKP deputy Selçuk Özdağ on Sunday said: “Our regime is a republic, the name of our state is the Republic of Turkey. Its founder was Mustafa Kemal Atatürk. The greatest leader of 95 years of politics after Mustafa Kemal Atatürk is our president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. In my opinion, [Erdoğan] is the last of the Mohicans.”
Debates over the regime in Turkey have been on the agenda since constitutional amendments bringing an executive presidency were approved in a referendum on April 16.
A ruling AKP deputy, Metin Külünk, said on Jan. 13 that the switch in Turkey to a presidential system would disable the “bureaucratic oligarchy” in the country and take revenge for the last 200 years.
Claiming the Republic of Turkey had come to an end, another AKP deputy, Tülay Babuşçu, said in 2015 that the” 90-year-long commercial break of a 600-year-old empire is now over.”
HÜDA-PAR endorsed the president in an April 16, 2017 referendum that gave Erdoğan huge powers. All convicted and charged Kurdish Hizbullah members have been released from jail in recent years thanks to Erdoğan’s reshuffling of the judiciary through which Islamists were brought into the key positions.
