Muharrem İnce speaks of his electoral potential

The Republican People’s Party (CHP)’s presidential candidate Muharrem İnce fielded journalist Nevşin Mengü’s questions for DW Turkish. In the interview in which many subjects from domestic politics to foreign policy and the economy to the judiciary were broached, İnce said that from what he had seen while out on the stump his share of the vote had moved into the thirties per cent

SYRIA AND FOREIGN POLICY

Asked, “Would you talk to Assad?” Muharrem İnce replied, “Why wouldn’t we talk to him. ‘I’ve fallen out with you.’ There can be no such thing. There are to be four million Syrians in Turkey. But, there is not to be a Turkish embassy in Damascus. Can there be such a mindset? What are we to do? We are going to look at them from here and not raise things with anyone. This is not correct. There is nobody I will not talk to.” İnce commented, “We will say, ‘Peace at home, peace in the world” once more. I mean, we must make peace with both Syria and the US and also with Germany.”

Coming to the question, “You have said you will close İncirlik if the US does not extradite Fethullah Gülen in your term as president. Will you close it?” İnce replied, “I did not say I would close it. I said the American military staff would spend their Christmas holiday in America. This is their right, anyway.”

ADDRESSES HIS FETO ALLEGATIONS

The CHP politician raised an allegation about the process by which the AKP was founded. Alleging that President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan visited Fethullah Gülen along with a certain person to obtain permission while founding the AKP in 2001, İnce said, “Did he go on a visit while founding the party? He never answers this. I know who he went with. I will say it when I am president.” Indicating that he would not disclose his name right now so that harm would not come to the person he was speaking of, İnce said he would divulge this name to the public when he was president. Noting that if elected he would be a president who turned his face towards the West, İnce commented, “The European Union is our goal. That is, we will not discuss foreign policy off the cuff. We will not make media-baiting, radical pronouncements. We will conduct foreign policy by aligning our country’s national security interests with its economic interests.”

“WE CAN COME TO AN UNDERSTANDING WITH GERMANY”

 Also assessing Ankara-Berlin relations that have passed through a turbulent period, the CHP candidate said, “There is no point in coming into the open and squabbling, saying, ‘Oi Merkel, oi Germany!’ We can come to an understanding.”

Repeating his pledge that the dollar will fall if he is elected president, İnce set out in the following words how he would accomplish this:

“Foreign currency likes a safe haven. If the haven is safe, money will come and the dollar will in fact fall. I mean, I will not summon a Central Bank governor to CHP headquarters. We will bring competent people to bear on the task, they will be people of merit. We will have no ideological obsessions. There will be transparency. There will be no corruption. We will dispense with the economy of waste and we will move to the economy of even-handedness. And investors will come and will in fact trust us.”

NARROW-STEMMED GLASS BAN

Also touching on Prof. Alaattin Duran, the Dean of Cerrahpaşa Medical Faculty which he visited, being dismissed after this meeting and the SoloTürk pilots having their flights cancelled after they had a photograph taken with him, İnce said, “If a dean is removed from his post and pilots are suspended from their duties because I visited them, you can be sure that next week they will ban drinking tea from the narrow-stemmed glass whose name resembles mine.”

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