* Photo: Murat Kula - İstanbul / AA
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President and ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) Chair Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has addressed the AKP's 7th Ordinary Congresses in Denizli, Mersin and Uşak provinces via video conference.
Erdoğan has argued that during the AKP rule for the past 18 years, its subsequent governments have improved citizens' quality of life.
He has claimed that they, as the AKP, have achieved "far more than all that had been achieved in Turkey's Republican history thus far."
Indicating that they have made Turkey "step into a new age" in a series of fields, ranging from education to healthcare, transportation to energy and from sports to social state practices, President Erdoğan has said, "While raising the life quality of every single citizen of ours more than ever done before, we have also widened their world views."
'Waiting for the government to be bestowed...'
Further in his speech, Erdoğan has said that there has always been political opposition against the AKP during its long time in office.
Specifically addressing the main opposition Republican People's Party (CHP) and its Chair Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, Erdoğan has said, "Theoretically, we should be in the biggest competition with the main opposition CHP. However, I must say with sadness that the actors and staff who have confronted us cannot compete with us in a race for work and services."
He has accused the CHP of "waiting the government to be bestowed upon itself, sometimes taking refuge behind tutelage, sometimes speaking for international lobbies and sometimes winking at coup plotters."
Noting that the CHP has "embraced an understanding of opposition based on saying the exact opposite of what the AKP says and objecting to whatever the AKP does," Erdoğan has said, "But, no actor has ever displayed such a caricature image as the CHP Chair."
'The one-poor-man rule'
"As a matter of fact, there is no politics belonging to the CHP in Turkey; in fact, it is also questionable whether there is a party called CHP. But does the CHP serve no purpose? There is of course a duty fulfilled by the CHP," Erdoğan has said and referred to the main opposition party in relation to its ally İYİ Party and the Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP):
"We can draw a comparison between this duty and scales. On the one scale, there is the HDP; on the other, there is the İYİ Party. The duty assigned to the CHP is to keep these both scales in balance and to prevent this partly overt, partly covenant alliance from falling apart."
He has said, "This person, who has brought his party into such a position, displays the epitome of dictatorship by silencing whoever opposes him and expelling them from the party, if necessary. As you know they have accused us and several politicians of being one-man rulers.
"Do you know what happens in the CHP now? The politics of one-poor-man is in force in the CHP now. They have condemned the CHP, the first political party of Turkey, to a single poor man and his strategies, stemming from the prompts of who knows whom." (AS/SD)
