İYİ Party Leader Meral Akşener responded strongly to the alliance discussions ahead of local elections, describing her party’s decision to enter the elections with its own candidates as a “democratic, national, rising journey.”
Following the rejection of the cooperation proposal for local elections brought by CHP Chairman Özgür Özel to the General Administrative Board of the İYİ Party, Akşener addressed her party’s parliamentary group, both defending the decision and giving a strong response to the alliance proposals.
Akşener, who described the election environment as a “zero-sum alliance system,” said, “We are experiencing the pride and happiness of starting Turkey’s democratic, national, rising journey against the two-polar politics nurtured and enlarged by media operations, pressures, slanders, and threats. We have made a meaningful and courageous start against those who reduce local governments to a gateway of profit, those who see municipality as a power area, not a service, and those who deceive our people with boatman fights,” she said.
Akşener stated, “We will not allow the trap of mandate and tutelage called an alliance. We will not submit to this masked ball.”
After the rejection of the proposal by CHP leader Özel, Ümit Özdağ, the leader of the Zafer Party, also offered a proposal to the İYİ Party.
Opposing alliance politics strongly, Akşener said, “We will hear slanders adorned with praise on this path. We will receive threats hidden behind bouquets of flowers. We will see those who smile at us and release their hitmen against us. They will shoot at us with their salaried commentators. Both sides will do this together. The common point of both sides is to prevent us from entering the election freely and independently. I have been watching for two days; none of them is different from the other,” she said.
“Those who see municipalities as a political profit arena, those who consider the people as chickens to be plucked will market their two-faced selfishness as virtue. But we have seen this movie before; we are seasoned. Therefore, even if they come with tanks and rifles, it will bounce off us and go away. We will give this struggle without being extras in someone else’s script, without being a springboard for someone else’s political career, without sharing someone else’s merit or sin, independently and freely together,” she added.