Consultant Defends Aide’s Kick

While Prime Ministry Adviser Yusuf Yerkel, caught on photograph kicking a citizen on the ground in Manisa's Soma district, said he, “could not keep his calm due to provocation”, PM Erdoğan’s primary consultant and Justice and Development Party (AKP) Ankara Deputy Yalçın Akdoğan said Yerkel had protected himself.

"The incident upset me"

“The incident that occurred in Soma on May 14 deeply upset me. I am sorry that I could not keep my calm despite all the provocations, insults and attacks I faced that day,” Yerkel commented in his press statement.

Consultant blamed the media

Akdoğan remarked in his column today on Star newspaper that Yerkel protected himself against the crowd trying to lynch him, and did not mention the footage of the Prime Minister and his guards assaulting the crowd.

“Media institutions that instead of transmitting the events objectively to the world try to arouse the impression that there has been a great uprising against the government are complicit to the same recklessness.

“The individual reactions that occurred through the provocation of some organization members toward Prime Minister Erdoğan who joined the public to listen to anguished families turned into an actual attack aimed at the Prime Ministry Team. The media has portrayed Yusuf Yerkel’s self-defense against those kicking the vehicles and seeking to lynch the team in a very discrepant way. It is not possible to understand the entirety of the event through a single photograph.” (ÇT/PU/BM)

* Click here to read the article in Turkish.