News of arrests of HDP members are coming on a daily basis. The Turkish regime keeps threatening the democratic opposition party with a ban. HDP Adana MP Tülay Hatimoğulları Oruç, talked to ANF about the current developments in the country and the geopolitical situation of Turkey.

"The peoples pay the price of war politics"

Hatimoğulları Oruç sees the economic crisis as Turkey's main problem and one with a close connection to war. She pointed out that the budget for the year 2021 was designed entirely to finance war and security policy.

"We pay the price of the government's neo-Ottoman policy"

Regarding the US sanctions, the MP said: “We are currently paying the price for the neo-Ottoman foreign policy and the government's hostility towards the Kurds. Looking at the sanctions associated with purchasing the S-400 [from Russia], the money spent on the F-35 and S-400 alone is roughly five to six billion dollars. The US says it will increase sanctions until the S-400s leave this country. Meanwhile, European Union sanctions are also on the agenda. Turkey's policies in the Eastern Mediterranean, Libya, Syria and Afrin are obvious. The Kurdish population was expelled from Afrin and jihadist and Salafist militias and ISIS members were brought into the region and ethnic cleansing was carried out. The government spends heavily on the fighters it sends from Syria to warfronts in Azerbaijan and Libya. In terms of domestic and foreign policy, Turkey is ruled by illegal, repressive and fascist policies. The peoples of Turkey and the Middle East, above all the Kurds, but also the poor and the workers, are paying the price for this."

"Back to the 90s"

Hatimoğulları Oruç sees clear parallels with the 1990s, especially in the connection between politics and the mafia and the resurgence of extrajudicial executions and other illegal practices.

She said: “The threats that Abdullah Çakıcı made against Kılıçdaroğlu, the leader of an opposition party, the tweets that Bahçeli sent to our party and the statements he made are the most obvious indicators of injustice and the illegality in which this country's regime operates. When these threats were made, we all thought of Susurluk [a 1996 car accident exposed the links between the state, the police and the mafia]. We live in a time when the mafia has come to the fore in important structures of the state. It's not just about threatening to close to our party. It's about threats against individual people, against politicians. We have to talk about the one-man regime bringing Turkey back to the dark 90s. We live once again in a time of extrajudicial killings, lawlessness and illegality."

"You are not talking about politics"

Hatimoğulları Oruç continued: “The HDP is a party that has been banned again and again till this day. We cannot actually speak of the age of the HDP only looking at the date it was founded. The HDP has existed since 1915, when Mustafa Suphi and his companions began to organize left-wing and socialist politics in this country. This party has matured and grown through personalities such as Behice Boran, Hikmet Kıvılcım, Deniz Gezmiş, Mahir Çayan, Ibrahim Kaypakka and the ideology of Mr. Öcalan. The HDP is a synthesis of left-wing socialist structures and a political line that reflects the free will of the Kurdish people. We have seen parties being closed in the past. It just shows that the state cannot deal with us politically."

The Adana MP sharply condemned the fact that the television station ATV, close to the regime, showed bomb and cartridges in the HDP logo instead of the star and the leaves: “This goes against law and justice as well as the ethical code of the press. Of course we have complained about it. But this is also an expression of the predicament in which the AKP regime finds itself. They attack us in parliament, attack us on the street, put our friends in jail, threaten to close our party, threaten us with Çakıcı - they try everything that can be imagined. But it still doesn't work. No matter what they will do, the HDP will remain intact."