GANAKKALE, Turkey — Turkey’s main opposition leader on Saturday warned President Recep Tayyip Erdogan that the whole country has a “thirst for justice”, opening an unprecedented four-day meeting protesting alleged violations under his rule.
Kemal Kilicdaroglu, head of the secular Republican People’s Party (CHP), is hoping the “justice congress” in the western Canakkale region will keep up the momentum of a monthlong march highlighting judicial abuses in Turkey after the July 15 failed coup.
With politics heating up in Turkey even two years before the next elections, Erdogan will later on Saturday host a mass rally at the opposite end of the country marking the anniversary of the 1071 Battle of Malazgirt where pre-Ottoman tribes defeated the Byzantines.
More than 50,000 people have been arrested under Turkey’s state of emergency, imposed after last year’s failed coup, and almost three times that number have lost their jobs, including teachers, judges, soldiers and police officers.
“Eighty million have a thirst for justice,” Kilicdaroglu said, referring to Turkey’s population.
“It is my duty to seek justice. It is my duty to stand by the innocent and be against tyrants,” he told some 10,000 people attending Saturday’s event.
—APP/AFP
