Future Party blasts MHP chair Bahçeli over 'mafiatic attitude' following veiled threat against journalists

Duvar English

Future Party spokesperson Serkan Özcan has slammed Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) leader Devlet Bahçeli over his veiled threat against Karar newspaper columnists, saying the MHP leader poses “a threat for the political and social peace with his mafiatic attitude.”

“The junior coalition partner of the rulership has explicitly lowered the politics to the street and relies on political sabotages. MHP chair Devlet Bahçeli has been lately often threatening the political and social peace in an attitude that is far away from politeness and responsibility,” he said on Jan. 19.

“He has been showing politicians, academics, opinion leaders and journalists as targets by giving their names, and the people who have been shown as targets are attacked in a short period of time...Bahçeli has been utilizing President [Recep Tayyip] Erdoğan's power, and by using his position in the rulership, he has been settling his personal accounts in a mafiatic attitude and throwing the country into the fire,” he said.

Özcan's remarks concerned last week's attack on Future Party deputy leader Selçuk Özdağ, which is believed to have been carried out by members of the MHP-linked Gray Wolves (Ülkücü movement).

State-run Anadolu Agency reported on Jan. 19 that two people were arrested by a court order with regards to the attack and three more suspects were being sought.

Following the attack on the opposition politician, Karar journalists channeled criticism towards Bahçeli, questioning why he was staying silent on the issue.

In the face of this criticism, Bahçeli on Jan. 18 issued a veiled threat, listing the names of the journalists and referring to them as “hired pens” of Karar newspaper.

“The hired pens of Karar newspaper, for example, Elif Çakır, for example, Yıldıray Oğur, for example, Taha Akyol and other so-called writers who do not have a column, they should not underestimate and defame the MHP. Because they have already fallen in the pit which they have themselves dug and gotten caught with their faces which are not going red,” Bahçeli wrote on Twitter.

Bahçeli also denied that the assailants had any links to the MHP, saying such a discourse amounted to a “plot” against the party.

After Bahçeli, MHP deputy leader also shows journalist Taha Akyol as target

After Bahçeli, MHP deputy leader Semih Yalçın also showed Karar journalist Akyol as a target, accusing him and “others similar to him” of “being enemies of peace.”

“They are all enemies of peace and brokers of chaos and disorder...As in the example of Taha Akyol and others similar to him...” Yalçın wrote in a tweet on Jan. 19 and referred to the journalists as “those exceeding their limits.”