Turkey’s main opposition Republican People’s Party-led (CHP) 25-day "justice march" still resonates with the country’s political debates.
Chair of CHP, Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu marched from Turkish capital of Ankara to İstanbul to protest the implementations of Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.
Kılıçdaroğlu delivered a speech on July 18 during his party’s first parliamentary group meeting after the “justice march” and the mass rally on July 9.
Referring to the reasons of his march, Kılıçdaroğlu stated: "We marched for this country’s oppressed people, who look for justice and peace. We marched for those people who face the barrier of age for retirement. We marched for the jailed lawmakers. We marched for the subcontracted workers. We marched for 249 martyrs who lost their lives during the FETÖ’s coup attempt. We marched to introduce [Turkey’s] illegitimate constitution to the world [referring to Turkey’s April 16 fraudulent referendum]. We marched to reinstate the merit system in Turkey. We marched for the victims of the public personnel examinations."
MARCH FOR CAPITALISTS AND FASCISTS
Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, who portrayed his “justice march” and the following mass rally in İstanbul as a non-party civil action to gather many different social groups and political circles, made controversial statements during his speech in the parliament.
Inviting Turkey’s top capitalist organisations during the “justice march”, Kılıçdaroğlu emphasised that they also marched for the business world’s safety of life and property. However, Turkey’s capitalists increased their rates of interest during the rule of President Erdoğan’s Justice and Development Party.
Kılıçdaroğlu set forth that they marched for Muhsin Yazıcıoğlu as well. Yazıcıoğlu was a renowned fascist political figure, who died in March 2009 in a helicopter crash. Some conspiracy theorists claimed that Yazıcıoğlu was killed after a plot by the US-based cleric Fethullah Gülen’s organisation, which was a long-time ally of President Erdoğan for many years in the run-up to the aborted coup of July 15, 2016.
Despite Muhsin Yazıcıoğlu had played a major role in orchestrating Turkey’s ultranationalist groups to commit murders and bloody attacks against many socialist figures during the anti-communist campaign in Turkey in the Cold War era, the fact that Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu stated that he also marched for the legal file of Muhsin Yazıcıoğlu led to harsh debates and criticisms among leftist people of Turkey.
