CHP leader calls Turkish President Erdogan a dictator while on ‘Justice March’

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region — The leader of Turkey second-largest and main opposition party, the Republican People’s Party (CHP), has called President Recep Tayyip Erdogan a dictator during the CHP's ‘Justice March,’ while adding that rights aren’t subject to one man’s blessing.

“I’m saying: You’re a dictator,” Turkish Hurriyet Daily News reported CHP head Kemal Kilicdaroglu as saying on Tuesday.

“He [Erdoğan] said ‘you are walking with our blessing.’ That is something that Pharaohs would have said in history, and that now dictators say,” he reportedly added at a weekly parliamentary group meeting in Bolu on the outskirts of Ankara.

Kilicdaroglu set out on Thursday with hundreds of supporters and journalists for what he said will be a 450-kilometer walk from Ankara to Istanbul. The ‘Justice March’ is in protest to the arrest of CHP deputy Enis Berberoglu, who was convicted of espionage and sentenced to 25 years in prison after leaking video of Turkish military trucks which were said to be delivering arms to Syria.

“I am supposedly living in a democratic country with constitutional rights. If somebody is saying my rights are subject to ‘blessing,’ I will simply remind them of his dictatorship,” Kilicdaroglu said, in a clear response to Erdogan’s previous remarks.

Erdogan said on Monday the “illegal” march by CHP was only taking place “thanks to the blessing of our government,” according to Hurriyet.

“You refer to the constitution and the state of law, but does Article 138 of the constitution only apply to one group of people? Nobody can even make a suggestion or instruct [the judiciary], putting it under pressure,” Erdoğan reportedly said.

Kilicdaroglu then countered Erdogan’s warning to “respect judicial rulings” by reading the related article aloud.

“No organ, authority, office or individual may give orders or instructions to courts or judges relating to the exercise of judicial power, send them circulars, or make recommendations or suggestions,” Hurriyet reported Kilicdaroglu as saying.

The actions against Berberoglu, a former newspaper deditor, were seen by some as a turning point because most post-coup crackdowns have targeted the mostly Kurdish, and opposition Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) parliamentarians or members, and not the CHP, which is the party of Mustafa Kemal Atarturk, who founded the Turkish republic.

About 50,000 people have been arrested as part of the country’s state of emergency decree, initially said to be a response to bringing order after last summer’s failed military coup. Since then at least 150,000 people have lost their jobs for alleged ties to the coup or other activities like supporting the banned Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).

The Justice and Development (AKP) holds 317 of 550 seats in the Grand National Assembly. The CHP has 133, while the HDP has 58. Erdogan was re-elected AKP leader on May 21 after a constitutional referendum opposed by CHP and HDP passed by a 51-49 margin allowing the country’s president to retain party membership.