AKP heavyweight Bülent Arınç slams own party for employing cocaine user

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Ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) heavyweight and former deputy prime minister Bülent Arınç has slammed his own party for employing a cocaine user to a high-ranking position. 

In a speech in which he heavily criticized the AKP on Oct. 31, Arınç said that party members used to work together and make up for the mistakes of one another, Independent Turkish reported. 

"We used to be a party full of people who complete one another. Bülent would make up for the shortcomings of Mr. Abdullah and Mr. Tayyip would do the same for Bülent," Arınç said, referring to former president Abdullah Gül, who has also publicly criticized the AKP in recent times. 

"Now you see in whose hands the party was left," he noted.

Arınç, who is among the founders of the AKP and who assumed a number of high-level posts in the past, resigned from his post as a member of the Presidential High Advisory Board following President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's criticism on Nov. 24 of last year.

In his speech on Oct. 31, Arınç blasted the AKP for employing a cocaine user. 

"They hired a cocaine user to work at the party headquarters. I wouldn't even allow him to get closer to the party's building," he said.

Arınç was possibly referring to Kürşat Ayvatoğlu, who was among the assistants of AKP deputy Hamza Dağ and who was seen to be snorting cocaine in a luxurious car in a video shared on social media in March. He was subsequently arrested. 

The AKP heavyweight also condemned the use of "hate-filled language" in politics, saying, "Politics should embrace everyone." 

He also stressed that he is still a member of the AKP and that he takes no responsibility for the AKP's actions after 2015. 

When asked to comment on the opposition parties founded by two former AKP politicians, Ahmet Davutoğlu and Ali Babacan, Arınç said, "What they did was wrong."