JOINT STATEMENT BY THE LEADERS OF SIX POLITICAL PARTIES (Ankara - JANUARY 26, 2023)

(Ankara - JANUARY 26, 2023)

We held the eleventh meeting of our cooperation process that we carry on with determination in order to bring our nation out of darkness into the light, on this holy day of Raghaib, hosted by the leader of GOOD Party, Meral Akşener.

First of all, on the occasion of this holy day of Raghaib celebrated by our people and the entire Islamic world, we pray to God for many more blessed days in peace.

At the outset, we evaluated the recent developments in our meeting.

We consider the heinous attacks committed against our holy book of Quran in Sweden and the Netherlands as a hate crime and strongly condemn the governments that shut their eyes to this. Going through a period where our people will soon go to the ballot-box to decide on our nation’s fate, we carefully follow the acts of provocation happening in the outside world that seem to always coincide with electoral periods for some reason.

Türkiye is being governed by an administration acting based on injustice, unlawfulness and disorderliness. In this context, Mr. Erdoğan is not allowed to run for office once again in the elections to be held on May 14 according to the clearly laid out provisions of the Constitution and the relative law that leave no room to doubt unless the parliament decides to renew the elections. The president is bringing another black stain to our history of democracy by declaring his candidature for the third time. We hereby publicly announce that we do not accept this disorderliness that ignores the Constitution.

Notwithstanding, we are certain that our people will say “Enough” to this unlawful order on the 100th anniversary of our Republic and we would like to declare that we, deriving strength from the support of our people, our self-confidence and love for this country, are ready for the elections that Mr. Erdogan plans to hold on May 14.

No matter when the elections are held, the winners will be the Nation Alliance that believes in the rule of law rather than the People’s Alliance that acts with an understanding of the rule of superiors. Even though the party in power is attempting to make up for the public support that it lost with all sorts of unlawfulness, we will give their game away thanks to the support of our people and we will make Türkiye a free and democratic state of law. We hereby challenge them and announce that we will end this one-man rule at the ballot-box in line with the public will!

Besides, the constitutional amendment proposal submitted by the People’s Alliance to the parliament was drawn up in a manner that questions the ‘religious beliefs’ of women wearing headscarves. This article pretends to protect women wearing headscarves whereas it would produce results to the contrary. A motion for amendment was submitted to remove this statement that questions women’s freedom to dress and their purpose in wearing a headscarf from the text. This motion that would bring a very clear constitutional guarantee for women who wear and do not wear headscarves was denied by the People’s Alliance. This reveals the People’s Alliance’s aim to turn women’s right to wear a headscarf into political exploitation in a disingenuous way, as they always do.

The Presidential Government System has become a survival problem for our state. The fact that the people’s will is ignored for the sake of the will of one person is a clear indication that the entire state is identified with one person. In today’s meeting, we have taken very concrete steps towards winning the elections and governing our country with a strengthened parliamentary system to which our people show great favor. We will soon finalize our Transition Road Map and publicly share it after our final evaluations once our Presidential candidate is determined.

In this meeting, we also agreed upon the Common Policies Text which we will publicly share on January 30. We summarized our concrete objectives, policies and projects under nine main headings and seventy five sub-headings targeting the top priority issues of our country ranging from poverty reduction to women’s rights, from cyber security to the political ethics law, from the reduction of extravagant public expenditures to reverse brain drain, from defense industry to disaster management, from vocational training to the crisis of housing, from drug enforcement to the problems of our artisans, from our borders policy to agriculture.

Finally, we discussed how to determine the Presidential candidate of the Nation Alliance in our meeting.

We would like to declare hereby that these six political parties are working together in a spirit of mutual consultation and reconciliation in line with the people’s wishes while we determine our Presidential candidate. Our people attach their hopes of prosperity and democratization to the union of these six parties. This assigns a historical mission to us. We know that Türkiye will determine her fate in the upcoming elections. Our people have entrusted us with their lives, property, future, hopes of breathing freely in a civilized and prosperous Türkiye. Our people should be confident; the six parties will rise to the challenge.

We hereby declare once more that:

the candidate of democracy defenders—a candidate who believes in the parliamentarian system and roots for basic rights and freedoms will be the 13th President of Türkiye.

the candidate of the Nation Alliance that says “Enough! Let the people have their say” will be the 13th President of Türkiye.

Our next meeting will be hosted by the Chairperson of the Felicity Party, Mr. Temel KARAMOLLAOĞLU on Monday, February 13, 2023.