Erdoğan addresses congress

30 September 2012 – ANF – Nothing new in the PM speech at the AKP congress. Who was expecting (or hoping) for some kind of fresh ideas from Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s speech at today’s 4 AKP general congress certainly got frustrated. Not only the PM and AKP president reiterated like a broken record the same things he has been saying for months now, but he even appeared to have chosen empty threats and bullying attitudes as his main features for the future.

Today’s speech was a list of the usual themes by the PM. No concrete proposals (the PM has taken a notion for indicating target dates for this and that but how is going to reach this target dates remains quite a mystery) was put on the table. Just some slogans. So “Before we [the AK Party] came to power [in 2002], there was no economic stability, no safety, no democracy in this country”, said Erdoğan.

Or again, “The era of coups in this country will never return again”.

And “Anyone who intervenes or tries to intervene in democracy will sooner or later go in front of the people’s courts and be made to account”. Erdoğan showed pride and self-contempt when he said the AKP is “an inspiration” to all Muslim nations. “In a country where the majority is Muslim, – he said and here perhaps it was a problem with the English translation but certainly the sentence which followed should be something to think very carefully about – we let democracy rule in its most advanced form and became an example for all Muslim countries”.

As to the Kurdish question, nothing new there either.

“We have been alone in our fight against terrorism, – said the PM – in our process of democratization”.

And he added: “We are determined to solve the Kurdish issue despite provocations and attrition campaigns against the government. The Kurdish question – Erdoğan added – can be solved not by those who hug terrorists, but those who hug the nation”. A direct and reiterated reference to a video showing deputies from the Peace and Democracy Party (BDP) and a group of PKK guerrillas chatting in Şemdinli some weeks ago.