Knife attack on Turkish opposition party’s election booth wounds several

Seven people were wounded in the attack on İYİ (Good) Party, which started upon the arrival of İYİ Party Bağcılar District Head Gökhan Yiğit to the booth.

The attack was reportedly carried out by a group of Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) supporters who were also at the area to campaign for June 24 parliamentary and presidential elections.

Eight suspects were detained after the incident, in which guns were allegedly also used.

Condemnations poured in after the attack and the harshest statement was released by İYİ Party Deputy Leader Müsavat Dervişoğlu, who said that MHP leader Devlet Bahçeli “is responsible for every drop of blood that spills.”

“Those who carried out the attack will surely be held accountable, but the actual responsibility belongs to those who ordered the attack. Whomever refrains from showing the tolerance that they show to traitors to idealists and drives children to the streets to make them attack us is a traitor and a coward,” Dervişoğlu said on May 6.

MHP dissidents founded the İYİ Party late last year and the two parties have been in a war of words ever since.

İYİ Party leader Meral Akşener also slammed the attack, saying that “no attack or threat will be able to make us abandon the road to goodness.”

“We will patiently build the goodness and common sense that Turkey needs,” Akşener wrote on his official Twitter account on May 6, while also using the hashtag “#TurkeyWillBeGood.”

Another political figure who condemned the attack was the main opposition Republican People’s Party’s (CHP) presidential candidate and lawmaker Muharrem İnce, who said that “political competition is not war.”

“Those who don’t vote for the party we do or think like us are not our enemies. All of us are the children of the same country!” İnce wrote on his official Twitter account.

İYİ Party spokesperson and lawmaker Aytun Çıray, meanwhile, said that “good ones always win,” while Lütfü Türkkan, the party’s deputy leader, said that “İYİ Party will come to power to put an end to this chaos, tension and vandalism.”

On May 4, an attack on Felicity Party’s (SP) booth was carried out in the capital Ankara. Several suspects were detained after the incident, but were released after their testimonies were taken.

Akşener: Hiçbir saldırı bizi iyilik yolundan döndüremeyecektir