Akşener: Erdoğan has always feared the word 'Gezi'

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İYİ (Good) Party leader Meral Akşener has criticized the government over Monday's (April 25) court ruling in the Gezi Park case and embraced the 2013 protests, saying, "The Gezi resistance gave hope to the helpless."

"Gezi was a resistance by our youth from idealists (ülkücü) to leftists, from pious to secular, from women to men, against the colony regime of Mr. Crisis, which was in its 10th year at the time," Akşener said at his party's parliamentary group meeting today (April 26).

"This resistance of the Turkish youth was against the AK Party's attempt against our national sovereignty in cooperation with FETÖ," she said, recalling the alliance between the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) and the Fetullah Gülen group, an Islamic group later deemed a "terrorist organization."

"Our youth resisted so that their homeland, for which they would die, would not be handed over to Mr. Erdoğan's construction barons, their state they are proud of would not to collapse at the hands of a group of lunatics," she remarked.

"In this aspect, the Gezi resistance was not only a protest for the Turkish youth. It was the rise of national consciousness. It was their struggle to open the eyes of the troubled nation by the authority they got from their ancestors."

This is why President and AKP Chair Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has always feared the word "Gezi," according to Akşener.

The İstanbul 13th Heavy Penal Court on Monday sentenced businessperson Osman Kavala to aggravated life imprisonment for "attempting to overthrow the government" and seven other defendants to assist him in this crime for being involved in the organization and financing of the protests. (AÖ/VK)