Dervişoğlu to Erdoğan: What Is Needed Is Accountability, Not Heads

İYİ Parti leader Müsavat Dervişoğlu directed his remarks to President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan from Istanbul: "I do not need a head; you are obliged to give an account."

This came in a speech he delivered during a ceremony welcoming new members to his party at a hotel in Esenyurt, where he said the government wants to "throw a head" before public opinion by displaying a number of defendants, instead of holding accountable those responsible for the fund crisis.

He said the file of what he called the "fund theft" contains 464 names of suspects, and asked whether anyone had seen a picture of a man in handcuffs on television or in the newspapers, in contrast to what happened when operations were carried out against municipal administrations.

He noted that three deputy heads of the Justice and Development Party (AKP) parliamentary group are demanding the publication of the list, while the head of the group insisted on the right not to be defamed before the matter becomes clear.

Dervişoğlu raised two banknotes of the 50 and 200 lira denominations, and said that those whose names bear signatures on these two notes are today languishing in prisons, and that "economics has fallen to the ground" as a result.

He added that the one who appointed the heads of the Capital Markets Board (SPK), the Banking Regulation and Supervision Agency (BDDK), the clearing company (Takasbank) and the Central Registry Agency (MKK) is the same authority, and that the signature on these appointments is one and the same, so Erdoğan cannot say he did not know what happened.

He displayed an official photograph taken on the day of the arrest of Ali Sökas, general manager of Ağaç AŞ, and other defendants in the Istanbul municipality case, handcuffed in a single row, and asked: "If you respect the right not to be defamed, why did you harm these people?"

He stressed that "the guilty one is the system" that places the fate of the Turkish people between the lips of one man and opens the way for him to take all decisions, and he called on those he described as the engineers of this system to stop searching for a scapegoat in the street.

On party matters, he said his party has exceeded 10 percent in opinion polls, and that it obtained this percentage in the 2018 and 2023 elections, adding: "If we aspire to govern Turkey, percentages of this kind are not enough for us."

He accused the "dirty hand" of the authorities of standing behind what he called the attacks on his party, and said that those who left the party are not comrades on the road, and that the time of greeting and respecting those who left has passed.