Erdoğan rebukes audience for not applauding him during speech

Duvar English

President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who is also the chairman of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), complained of not receiving enough applause as he was making a speech at the Presidential Complex in the capital Ankara on Jan. 16.

Erdoğan's complaint came as he was addressing the Annual Evaluation Meeting for 2019 at Beştepe National Congress and Culture Center.

Erdoğantouched upon many issues concerning Turkey and talked about what thegovernment plans for the year ahead as well as what had been alreadydone in 2019.

As he was talking about the Turkish defense industry and the locally-developed helicopter named “Gökbey,” he asked the audience if they “liked” the project, for which he received an applause. But, Erdoğan did not find the audience's enthusiasm adequate, saying: “Applauses are not coming.”

'I have tired you out'

Erdoğan'sspeech lasted two hours and seven minutes in total, at the end ofwhich he said: “I know that I have tired you out, but I have cometo the end of my speech.”

“We have briefly tried to give you an overall assessment of the last 17 years [since the AKP came to power] and also to express what we did in 2019 and will do in 2020. But, in fact, these are not all of the things that we did and will do; otherwise, it [the speech] would have taken hours,” he said.