Erdoğan resumes position of chair of Turkey's ruling party AKP

Turkey’s ruling party AKP (Justice and Development Party) convened at its 3rd extraordinary congress on Sunday (May 21) in the country’s capital city of Ankara.

After Prime Minister Binali Yıldırım’s last speech as the chair of his party, President Erdoğan – who has been granted the right to keep affinity with a political party with the newest constitutional amendments voted on at the referendum of April 16th – took on stage and began his speech by reading a verse from the Koran in Turkish.

Saying ‘we are together here again after 998 days’, Erdoğan stated ‘it will be yet another new start for his party’ as he resumed the position of the chair of AKP again with the votes of 1414 delegates from his party.

The crowd in the hall chanted ‘here is the army, here is the commander in chief’ as Erdoğan gave his speech.

'Take me down if you see me doing something wrong'

Extending his special appreciation to the police and the rangers, Erdoğan vowed to ‘never give up on the path of his party’, by saying: “They may not allow us to enter the parliament; they may try to shut down our party; or they may carry out a coup: let be it that way! We are not going to change our path.”

Claiming that AKP is the first and only political party in Turkey that has a ‘bottom-up’ design rather than a one that is top-down, Erdoğan said ‘AKP is the party of the nation’ and extended his ‘thanks to all 80 million people of Turkey.’

'Dismissals are an obligation'

‘AKP is the center of reform and there is no other party that could meet the demands and expectations in Turkey’, he said.
Calling on his supporters to ‘tackle him down if they see him doing something wrong’, Erdoğan also commented on fight of Turkey’s security forces against terror.

With regards to the ongoing crackdown in response to the failed coup attempt of last summer, Erdoğan said the ‘dismissals are an obligation.’

'How dare you ask about state of emergency?'

Erdoğan continued: “They say ‘when will the state of emergency be lifted?’ In my country, the state is tried to be toppled: how dare you ask us of the state of emergency? It’s not going to be lifted! ‘Till when? ‘Till we reach a rest. What do you not have? Aren’t your factories working? Are your schools closed? Why should the state of emergency be lifted? When we came to power, we lifted the state of emergency. Now, for the sake of our nations’s serenity, we are extending the state of emergency..."

Source: https://www.birgun.net/haber-detay/erdogan-yeniden-akp-genel-baskani-oldu-160561.html