VIDEO Opposition leaders in Turkey, kicked out of their own party headquarters. Police force intervention
Hundreds of police officers stormed the Ankara headquarters of the main opposition party in Turkey on Sunday to expel its leaders, who were dismissed on Thursday by a court decision, AFP and Reuters report, quoted by Agerpres.
Supporters of the leader of the Republican People's Party (CHP, Social Democrat), Ozgur Ozel, had blocked access to the building since morning, refusing to accept that he, a fierce critic of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, would have to relinquish control of the party, which has faced investigations and arrests for the past year and a half.
Police wearing helmets and shields managed to enter the building in the afternoon and remove CHP leaders after using tear gas, among other tactics.
Violence erupted after Turkish police stormed the headquarters of the main opposition CHP party in Ankara following a court ruling that removed leader Ozgur Ozel and reinstated former chairman Kemal Kilicdaroglu.
Officers fired tear gas and removed Ozel from the building. pic.twitter.com/pigbHWR983
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“They beat us with sticks”
“They stormed our headquarters (…), used tear gas, beat us with sticks, destroyed the party building and threw us into the street,” Ozel told AFP on Sunday evening.
“Erdogan has lost his mind,” he added, saying the Turkish head of state, in power since 2003, “wants to decide who his rivals are” in order to win the next election.
“Turkey ceased to be a modern democratic republic and turned into an authoritarian regime,” Ozel also declared.
Leaving CHP headquarters, he told his supporters he would continue to “march to power” before walking several kilometers through pouring rain to parliament, now the “real headquarters of the party”.
Similar scenes took place last year in Istanbul, the country's largest city, when the judiciary appointed an administrator to head the CHP's provincial leadership.
