North’s ‘House speaker’ brands opposition traitors

The leaderships of north’s two largest political parties, the ruling UBP and opposition CTP, are to meet, after the CTP took offence to remarks made by ‘parliament speaker’ Zorlu Tore.

The meeting was announced in ‘parliament’ on Wednesday by CTP Leader Tufan Erhurman, with the day’s sitting presided over by Ali Pilli in Tore’s absence.

“There is a friend who is not here today and has the title of parliament speaker. If he says something from this podium, we will have an answer ready, but he appears on television programmes and displays an attitude accusing 19 CTP MPs and their community of being traitors to the nation,” said Erhurman.

“We would not pay much attention to such attitudes, and we would not particularly care, but we are talking about the parliament speaker. Such accusations are completely unjustified,” he added.

“It is an injustice for someone who accuses half the parliament in this way on television to occupy this office. I have a two-and-a-half-year-old child, and I and the CTP cannot tolerate having him grow up seeing people call his father a traitor.”

He told the house that he had spoken with ‘prime minister’ Unal Ustel and UBP deputy leader Ahmet Savasan, with a meeting to be held in due course.

“After this meeting, we will determine what our next steps will be,” he added.

Erhurman was referring to comments made by Zorlu Tore in a televised interview on public broadcaster BRT on Wednesday.

Tore had mentioned on multiple occasions about how there were “19 MPs who say they don’t celebrate Turkey’s national day on October 29 or our Independence Day on November 15.”

He had also singled out CTP ‘MPs’ Ongun Talat and Fazilet Ozdenefe, saying the former was a “friend of ours who tells super lies”, and the latter’s no vote to a bill “was an act borne out of a dislike for Turkey”.

He also denied accusations that he was “targeting” CTP ‘MPs’, saying “if you feel like Zorlu Tore is targeting you, maybe you should watch your words.”