President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan remains defiant as ever as he challenges critics of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AK Party) and, more importantly, what he called “a cause for great Türkiye and the nation.”
Erdoğan underlined on Wednesday that what he and fellow members of the party worked for was beyond politics and for a greater cause for advancing the prospects of the country. Addressing the party’s parliamentary group meeting in Ankara, the president also stressed he was merely a member of the movement.
“Erdoğan may go away tomorrow, but there will be thousands more Erdoğans,” he said amid the applause of fellow AK Party members.
The president’s speech was mostly a criticism of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), the archrival of the AK Party, which has nonetheless failed to defeat it in elections for more than two decades. He also devoted a large portion of the speech to his personal struggles in politics, where he confronted betrayal, threats of death and attempts to curb the rise of the AK Party.
His speech began with praise for Turkish youth and how the AK Party has never discriminated among the youth. Erdoğan had attended a youth festival earlier in the northwestern province of Kocaeli, organized by his party, and met youngsters again on the occasion of the Commemoration of Atatürk, Youth and Sports Day on May 19. The CHP has claimed the AK Party tricked the youth into joining the event by offering free concerts.
