Former AKP deputy targets Kurdish, Alevi families, calls them 'double-roasted liars'

Duvar English

In an attack on main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) chair Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, former Justice and Development Party (AKP) lawmaker Hüseyin Besli targeted Alevi and Kurdish families living in Turkey. Kılıçdaroğlu, who is Alevi, is a "liar", Besli wrote, because Alevi and Kurdish children are raised as “double-roasted liars.”

Besli, who has a close relationship with President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan Erdoğan, has written that because Alevi and Kurdish people were forced to hide their identities in public life in Turkey for so long, they have become compulsive liars. 

“People like Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, in a way, in order to gain a place in society, tell an innocent and compulsive lie. Over time, they adopt lying as their character,” he wrote. 

It is estimated that 10-15% of Turkey’s population is Alevi, especially concentrated in the country’s eastern Kurdish regions. Both Alevis and Kurdish people have long been discriminated against in Turkey.

Besli said that from birth, Alevi parents teach their children to lie about who they are. This is worse for Kurdish Alevis, he said, who have to hide both their Kurdish and Alevi identity. This multi-layered lying, he said, becomes part of the character of Kurdish and Alevi children. 

"The children in question are made into 'double roasted liars,’” Besli wrote. "The more skillfully they can lie, the better they have been brought up.”