Nationalist Movement Party

Last Sunday, a young Kurdish protestor who masked his face entered a Turkish Air Force base in the predominantly Kurdish province of Diyarbakır. He climbed up the pole, reached out to the Turkish flag, and took it down. The military personnel, somehow, could not stop him.

Turkey’s opposition leaders have lined up to slam the state science watchdog TÜBİTAK, which recently concluded that leaked voice recordings, allegedly belonging to Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and apparently proving his involvement in a huge graft scandal, “were montaged.”

A prosecutor has demanded jail terms of between two and five years for 118 people involved in an attack on the People’s Democratic Party (HDP) headquarters in the Mediterranean resort town of Fethiye in March.

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has described the removal of a Turkish flag from a mast inside an Air Force base in the southeastern province of Diyarbakır on June 8 as an attempt to “stir up trouble across the country,” while criticizing the military for allowing the act to be carried out.

The removal of a Turkish flag at an Air Force base in the southeastern province of Diyarbakır is indication of a de facto occupation by the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) leader Devlet Bahçeli has said, calling on the chief of general staff to resign over his responsibility for such a failure.

The government of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has done more than any previous Turkish government in trying to address the country’s Kurdish problem.

The social, cultural and political steps it has taken in this regard may not appear highly significant to an outsider.

Main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) leader Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu will meet leaders of other opposition parties starting from Monday next week, dismissing claims that the opposition is leaving it late in appointing its candidate for the upcoming presidential elections.

Istanbul police detained a man on June 5 after he was outed by social media users as “the pink-shirted provocateur” who participated in a fiery Kurdish protest minutes before attending a Turkish nationalist demonstration in the same neighborhood.

Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) leader Devlet Bahçeli has strictly dismissed the idea of running as a candidate in the upcoming presidential election, vowing to stick to his decision come hell or high water.

Last Sunday, June 1, there were re-elections in Yalova and Ağrı, in which the ruling Justice and Development Party (AK Party) lost in both. There are those who present the results of these elections as a general referendum for the government and others who argue these results cannot be magnified to nationwide conclusions.