Turkish far-right leader says support for Kılıçdaroğlu means 'heavy price in afterlife'

Ultranationalist Great Unity Party (BBP) leader Mustafa Destici has brought a new dimension to politics and said that anyone supporting the opposition alliance or its newly declared presidential candidate Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu “would have to pay a very heavy price both in this world and in the afterlife.”

Wednesday March 08 2023 12:07 am

Duvar English

Ultranationalist Great Unity Party (BBP) leader Mustafa Destici has argued that supporting the opposition’s presidential candidate Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu means “paying a heavy price in the afterlife.”

Destici made the comments on March 7 while visiting the quake-hit province of Diyarbakır. During his remarks, he also targeted the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) by referring to it using the government’s classical discourse of “the extension of the PKK (Kurdistan Workers’ Party).”

“A presidential candidate and an alliance with whom the PKK’s extension HDP is involved with or supports cannot be supported. The sin of this would be heavy. Lament of mothers and fathers left behind by our hero martyrs would certainly hit them. They would have to pay a very heavy price both in this world and in the afterlife,” he was quoted as saying by Demirören news agency.

Destici's BBP is a part of the alliance between the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) and the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP).

After main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) leader Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu’s presidential candidacy, the Kurdish-focused HDP signalled that it might support him.

On March 6, HDP co-chair Mithat Sancar told broadcaster Habertürk that his party could consider entering elections with a single opposition candidate although previously indicating that they will run with their own candidate.