Kılıçdaroğlu: I said everything you can imagine

Ayşe Sayın
 
CHP General Chair Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, with reference to the roughly one and a half hour private meeting he had with Prime-Minister Binali Yıldırım, sufficed himself with saying, “We spoke about everything you can imagine. I said everything, but everything, you can imagine.”
 
Kılıçdaroğlu, imparting no information on the content of the meeting, answered our question, “Did you receive a positive reply about Gülmen and Özakça’s situation?” saying, “The Prime-Minister gave me a note but I have not yet looked at it.” Kılıçdaroğlu yesterday met with Prime-Minister Binali Yıldırım, to whom he “wrote a letter” about Nuriye Gülmen and Semih Özakça, who were sacked under state of emergency decrees with the force of law and have completed 223 days on hunger strike despite being in detention, with the further request for a meeting with him. Yıldırım confined himself to commenting, “There’s no agenda. It’s open ended. We’ll talk about the country’s affairs” in response to journalists’ questions about the content of the meeting prior to his party’s group meeting. The meeting held in Yıldırım’s office in Parliament was in private and, in excess of expectations, lasted one and a half hours. Kılıçdaroğlu, making off-the-cuff comments to us following the meeting, did not go into detail but retorted, “We spoke about everything you can imagine. I said everything, but everything, you can imagine.”
 
When it came to our question regarding Gülmen and Özakça’s situation, “Did you receive a positive reply?”, he said, “The Prime-Minister gave a note but I have not yet looked at it.” Questioned on a whole host of points including the non-release of Istanbul MP Enis Berberoğlu whose conviction has been overturned by the appeal court, Northern Iraq, Idlib and the extension of the state of emergency, he once more replied, “Everything” but went into no detail. The word in the lobbies is that Kılıçdaroğlu requested that Gülmen and Özakça’s state of detention be reviewed and their files be prioritised by the State of Emergency Commission to enable their reinstatement in their jobs. From among what has been gleaned, Kılıçdaroğlu, recalling the appeal court’s ruling overturning the sentence handed down to Berberoğlu and voicing his reproaches and criticism that he had not yet been released, gave examples of the judiciary’s arbitrary practices. Kılıçdaroğlu, who expounded with examples on the destruction that the state of emergency has wreaked, placed great emphasis on the need for state of emergency decrees with the force of law to be brought before Parliament.
 
The kidnapped soldiers
 
Constituting a further item on the meeting’s agenda was the position of the families of the soldiers and policemen kidnapped by the PKK who have visited him in recent days. Kılıçdaroğlu apparently conveyed to Yıldırım the families’ complaints about the injustices they have experienced and the state’s failure to give them sufficient backing.