Resigned AK Party deputy says many officials on same page as him
Hakan Şükür, a deputy who recently resigned from the ruling Justice and Development Party (AK Party), has said there are many others inside the party who are on the same page as him.
“I have many friends who think the same as me regarding my decision to resign. I can say this with certainty. … They include deputies, ministers,” Şükür, a former football star, said in an interview with Bugün TV, which aired on Tuesday night.
He said many of his friends inside the party call him and tell him that they completely share the views he expressed on Twitter about prep schools and the government's recent policies.
At a time when the public was outraged over the government's decision to shut down prep schools last month, Şükür posted several tweets to show solidarity with those who criticized the government on the prep school closure and only received a small amount of criticism from fellow deputies.
He said there are many inside the AK Party who share his thoughts, but they have “convinced themselves that things [their situation in the party] should stay this way.”
When the program moderator, Erkam Tufan Aytav, asked him whether or not they are able to publicly express their own thoughts, Şükür said, “I don't know.”
Şükür's eloquently written resignation letter raised doubts among his critics that Şükür, who has no journalistic background, wrote the letter.
Şükür dismissed the allegations, saying that his resignation letter was nearly five pages long and that it was not the one-and-a-half-page letter he published.
“I was at home, I was sick. I dictated the letter to my wife; it was a very emotional letter. The parts that I cut could have conveyed very different meanings from my real intention and that's why I didn't include that part in the final letter. This is the reason why I'm here on this program,” Şükür said.
He said he had consulted Turkish Islamic scholar Fethullah Gülen with respect to his resignation and that Gülen had told him, “Let us be among the people we value and share our good will.”
In reference to Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's praise of Iranian businessman Reza Zarrab, who has been implicated in a recent corruption investigation, Şükür said, “When I see this type of thing, I realize that I made a very good decision.”
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