Turkish President and Chairman of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has implied that an ongoing probe into "espionage" and the "leaking of secret state documents" can also reach main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) leader Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu.
"The leader of the main opposition is obviously trying to muddy the waters over concerns that charges which led to the imprisonment of one of his lawmakers may reach him as well. Don’t get surprised if Kılıçdaroğlu’s link on the issue related to the jailed lawmaker is revealed,” Erdoğan said at an AKP rally in the southern city of Antalya.
Turkish authorities on June 14 arrested a lawmaker from CHP after a court handed him a 25-year jail sentence for giving material about the illegal weapon shipment to jihadist in Syria.
Enis Berberoğlu was accused of providing Cumhuriyet newspaper with a video purporting to show Turkey's intelligence agency trucking weapons into Syria. The report in Cumhuriyet newspaper in May 2015 said that trucks owned by Turkey's state intelligence service were found to contain weapons and ammunition that were headed for Syria when they were stopped and searched in southern Turkey in early 2014.
"I hear different news coming from prison. 'I will speak if I am not freed,' the imprisoned person says," Erdoğan added, referring to CHP Istanbul Deputy Enis Berberoğlu.
Pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) Şanlıurfa deputy and spokesperson Osman Baydemir on Thursday said it would be no surprise if Kılıçdaroğlu were to be arrested.
Erdoğan also addressed possible links between some party members and the group said to be behind last year’s failed coup -- the Fethullah Terrorist Organization (FETÖ).
"Wherever there are those who are linked to FETÖ, notify us immediately and we are obliged to show them the door immediately," he said.
Referring to the group's U.S.-based Islamic preacher, his former ally, Fethullah Gülen, Erdoğan added: "They have parked in Pennsylvania, Germany, in different countries of the West. You will escape to many more countries. You will escape to Africa. But you will escape and we will chase... Because we cannot tolerate my nation to be split."
In a further sign of an impending shake-up in the ruling party, Erdoğan said that the party he leads cannot be allowed to stagnate. He added that those become a burden to the party would be "pulled off the road".
