AK PARTY GROUP MEETING
(FEBRUARY 2, 2010)

Our distinguished guests,
My distinguished Deputy friends,
Ladies and Gentlemen:
I salute you all with my dearest feelings in this new edition of our group meeting. I welcome all our guests and I wish that our group meeting will bring good to our country, people and democracy. At the very beginning of my speech I want to congratulate our Antalya Deputy Mevlut Cavusoglu for being elected to the presidential post in Parliamentary Assembly of Council of Europe last week. He is here today with us and I wish him the best in his new assignment. He is elected for a two-year term and it is our hope that he will achieve further success. This is a development to be proud of and at the same time it showcases the increasing importance of our country in the international arena during the AK Party’s office. Turkey’s activity within the international organizations and the roles it take reflect the importance of our foreign policy. It was during our office that Turkey was elected as a non-permanent member of UN Security Council for the years 2009 and 2010. During the same period we assumed the vice-presidency role in the Alliance of Civilizations Project alongside Spain. The election of a Turk as the Secretary General of Organization of Islamic Conference for two consecutive terms also took place during our office. Again the election of a Turkish citizen as the Director General of Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons happened in time of an AK Party government. We are being represented in many platforms from UN Common Inspection Unit to International Atomic Energy Agency and Committee for the Prevention of Torture.
My distinguished friends,
These things did not happen by themselves. We explained ourselves, we explained our theses, and we offered solutions and played active roles in every platform. However, I am sorry to note that –I want all our citizens watching us on their TVs to especially know it-while the AK Party government was increasing Turkey’s role and importance in the international arena, the attitude of opposition has been pathetic for our country. Look, Turkey has been a member of Parliamentary Assembly of Council of Europe for 61 years and for the first time in 61 years a Turk and an Eastern European member is taking over the presidential post. This is the success of Turkey –pay attention; I am not saying success of AK Party-. Turkey should be proud and happy over this success. However, let alone appreciating this success the opposition fails to show the virtue of sharing this joy. A motion opposing the presidency of our brother Mevlut Cavusoglu has come about and unfortunately CHP Deputy Miss Birgen Keles favored this motion while MHP Deputy Mister Tugrul Turkes did not participate the voting and left the room. Our brother Mevlut Cavusoglu has been elected with the support of more than 40 members of the total 47 members and yet the members of opposition in Turkey try to sabotage this process. You claim to be nationalists, where is your nationalism? You claim to love this country, where is your love? What is this hatred for? What kind of an attitude is this? Can you imagine? Many leaders of the world, many presidents called up our friend to congratulate but not any of the chairmen of the opposition parties showed the decency to do so. As if this is not enough, a deputy of the opposition Ertugrul Kumcuoglu from MHP has issued a formal question in TGNA and asked why did the chief negotiator Egemen Bagis participate the meeting in the Council for our friend? While we are bringing Turkey under the spotlights and working to elevate Turkey’s importance and reputation, the opposition continues to produce futile debates due to their jealousy and pointless pursuit of interest. We will continue to protect the interest of Turkey and to increase the role of Turkey in the international arena despite the opposition’s inability to appreciate the process.
My distinguished friends,
I want to share with you two new developments concerning the economy. As you all know, Fitch Ratings increased the credit rating of Turkey by two grades –up to BB+ - in December. Following this, Moody’s increased our credit rating by one grade –up to BA2- in January. Yesterday Japanese credit rating agency JCR raised Turkey’s rating for long term borrowing credit from BB- to BB. The important part here is the reason for the Japanese firm’s decision is Turkey’s resilience against the external shocks during the time of global financial crisis. Another important figure is related to the exports. Turkish Exporters Assembly published the numbers of exports for the month of January and we witnessed a promising development there. The export figure has reached to 7 billion and 912 million Dollars which signifies a 12.5 point increase over last year’s figure. The numbers for the year 2009 was also revealed last week by Turkish Statistical Institute. For the entire year, 102 billion and 165 million Dollars-worth export has been made. Despite the ongoing difficulties in the world due to the financial crisis, our credit ratings are on the rise and so is our outlook on exports. These are very promising developments.
These great changes taking place in Turkish economy, domestic politics, social life and foreign policy should have been completed 20 or 30 years ago. Unfortunately this changes and transformations were constantly delayed due to the populist policies, status quo-embracing mindset, the wardship-favoring political approach that avoids taking risks and paying the price when necessary. Remember the discourse of the politicians of the time. They said “I pay five times more than what they offer”. This political approach took more than what it gave to our people and caused dearly to our country in medium and long term after the brief and deceiving breather it provided first. They forced the personnel of the Central Bank to overtime and printed more and more money in order to distribute it lavishly. Inevitably the skyrocketing of inflation rate followed it and took back more than they had given. Chairman of CHP Mister Baykal saved everybody at once in his party’s group meeting last week from the workers, public workers, farmers to the unemployed teachers to the 4/C-status.
First of all I want to express my delight as Mister Baykal has remembered these sections of the society for a change. It reflects a certain level of progress and signifies the return to the real agenda of Turkey. Kudos to Mister Baykal as he manages to solve the problems of the workers, public workers, unassigned teachers, poor and retirees all at once. It is easy for him to solve these problems since he has no actual responsibility in any of it. Thus he easily assigns 20 thousand teachers, provides job to one person from each family, and lifts the 4/C status. What is your formula to achieve all this then? Oh no, he does not have a formula. It is the reflection of the understanding “I pay five times more than they offer”. Mister Baykal’s discourse is exactly the same populist right-wing discourse that their Group Vice Chairman had mentioned before. It is this populist attitude that paralyzed Turkish economy for decades. This populist attitude provided no remedy to any of our problems but on the contrary it makes every section of our country to pay heavy prices. This political style that offers miracles but caused great difficulties to victimized people became history in 2002 elections.
I want to remind these figures to Mister Baykal: Since 2003 our government has completed the assignments of 158 thousand fixed-term and 70 thousand contracted teachers –which totals an amount of 228 thousand-. As you know the leading expense of our budgets for seven years has been the Ministry of National Education. We have always provided the greatest number of employment to our Ministry of National Education. These were all firsts that took place during our office. We are going to assign 40 thousand new fixed-term teachers. We are forcing the limits of our budget to make these assignments my distinguished friends, and people who are part of this business and apply a realistic approach know that we place education above everything else. We will keep placing education on the top of our priorities. Obviously these teachers are not coming from outer space or anything. We are not importing these teachers; they are children of our country. However, there are other aspects to these assignments such as the number of college graduates to be assigned and the limitations of the budget.
Running the state requires being serious. Running the economy requires being even more serious. This brings us to another subject, my distinguished friends. A group of TEKEL workers are doing protests in Ankara for six weeks. I want to underline this part, a group of TEKEL workers not all of them are doing these protests. Certain things have to be made clear and told to our people with all their aspects. Between the years 1992 and 2003 14 thousand workers were laid off –all their compensations were fully paid- due to privatization. My distinguished friends, from 1992 to 2003, that is 11 years of time. In 2004 after our negotiations with the labor unions –I want to underline after negotiating with the labor unions- we started the 4/C exercise due to the request of the labor unions. We made this decision jointly and this is how the process started. Those very same labor unions are now denying the process we jointly initiated. 4/C should be dropped off the agenda. They say that 4/C is equal to slavery. Those very same people from unions say it. Where is your honesty? We should be serious about it. We said that no one will lose their jobs due to the privatization. Furthermore we said that we were going to include the 14 thousand workers that lost their jobs prior to our administration to the 4/C status and in fact we did. Is our administration against the workers? Did this government leave its workers aside? Today the total number of employees in TEKEL is 10850 my distinguished brothers and sisters, and we pay them 40 million TL-worth salary every month. We had a meeting with the labor unions and they said that they only want six months and after we get through the six month-period we will have no problems.
We talked to presidents of TURK-IS, TEK-GIDA-IS and DEMIR-YOL-IS –if I am not mistaken- with our Minister of Finance Mister Kemal. We said that we are shutting down these facilities and you will not have the opportunity to prolong the process any longer and they only said that they needed six months. I want to address our dear citizens here. This is not about privatization. This is about the closing of the warehouses storing tobacco leafs. Privatization is one thing and the closing of these warehouses is another. Except for a couple locations where the processing of leafs continued these warehouses have not been active for two years but we continue to pay the salaries of our worker brothers and sisters. According to the business law, in a work place you only pay the notice and severance compensations when it is being closed down. The labor unions know it very well. They approved this process when they were talking to us. However, we have showed some good will and wanted to include our brothers and sisters to 4/C status. We wanted to pay them within the requirements of 4/C which was a minimum wage of 650 TL. We wanted to improve this amount as well and I ordered our friends to work on this figure. We wanted not only the TEKEL workers but all the 4/C workers to benefit from improved conditions. Thus we raised the salaries for elementary school graduates from 658 TL to 772 TL, for high school graduates from 739 TL to 856 TL and for college graduates from 820 TL to 938 TL. We talked about these figures in our board of ministers and agreed upon these numbers. Social security and personal benefits remained in place which means that there is no negativity on the health care issue. And now they claim otherwise.
I want to address the media here. I am truly sorry for my country as they do not act honestly. We are here to protect the interest and rights of our people. We are given this responsibility and we should use this responsibility with integrity. They say that they have been barely eating anything for days now. They are just agitating the whole situation. If they are indeed TEKEL workers their salaries were fully paid as of yesterday. Moreover their compensations were fully paid yesterday at 3 p.m. Ranging from 20 thousand up to 80 thousand TL an average of 40 thousand TL-worth compensation were paid to them and why do they share a single piece of bread now? They are still being paid and could easily afford a meal. We are still providing them the opportunity to be included to the 4/C status until the end of February. We announced the numbers and 10 thousand TEKEL workers have the right to benefit from 4/C status. I have talked about the new and increased salaries and surely we will have other improvements in these salaries in the future. We met with presidents of three labor unions last Thursday while my minister friends Mister Hayati and Mehmet and president of TURK-IS were also present. The only complaint they had was on the severance pay issue. They also mentioned a few small things. I said to them if there are no legal problems my staff will work on the issue of continuation of severance pay. If, however, there is a legal barrier then we will make the necessary regulations for the next term to pay the compensations. And all of a sudden they came yesterday and said that they do not want it. We do not accept it. We have already done more than enough.
My distinguished brothers and sisters, as you all know 13 billion TL-worth compulsory cut was made from our workers and civil servants. None of the governments prior to ours paid this cut back. We paid this money back to them. We did it. This money was cut in the name of housing aid and no one paid them back. We started to pay them back. We have paid 3 billion TL back and we still continue to pay. Where do all these come from despite all our good and constructive approach? Mister Baykal was the first to go to the site of protests. Mister Baykal should first go and visit the workers who were laid of by his party’s municipalities without being paid any compensation. He should first solve their problems. He should act with honesty. There are 300 or 500 workers gathered in front of TURK-IS building and they are joined by some irrelevant organizations one of them being the “unable to become a teacher union’. What does that even mean? Seriously some things in Turkey are becoming absurd and ridiculous. You take a computer-based exam and if you pass it you will become a teacher, simple as that. We took 40 thousand new teachers this year. Those who fail to enter this 40 thousand are saying “what about our families”. There is no country in the world where the college graduates automatically become teachers. Similarly there is no guarantee for the college graduates to immediately get a job right after graduation.
Today in the most advanced country of the world, the USA, the unemployment rate is up to nine percent. Japan is a disaster too. In Spain the unemployment rate is increased to 18 percent from 8 percent. In these countries there is no distinction between workers and civil servants. There are just workers, people who have jobs. I said it the other day. The labor unions of workers and civil servants should merge and establish a grand union of workers. Thus we do not have to negotiate the contracts separately with them. They should figure it out but they do not want to do so. They want to hit us separately but we are going to run this country with flying colors. Flying colors I said. We have always acted constructively and positively. We always wanted to solve the problems. I have a labor union background. I had long been a worker and the management of TURK-IS thus know me very well. They also know very well what rights I provided to them when I was the mayor of Istanbul. Despite all these facts they act the way they do right now and being dishonest and insincere. Thus I deem necessary to remind it. Unfortunately we do not see this positive attitude on the side of workers because this incident has turned into a source of exploitation by the ideological groups and extremists. A group of TEKEL workers have unfortunately become part of this exploitation and fallen to their trap.
The protest of TEKEL workers is drifted away from its original context and purpose. It is not about seeking rights anymore, it turned out to be a campaign against the government. Look at their slogans and signs; they are using a foul language aiming at my personality and my party. CHP and MHP are exploiting these worker brothers and sisters of mine. Both parties have been part of the governments between the years 1992 and 2003. It was during their administrations that 14 thousand workers were thrown out to the streets and our government took these workers under the 4/C status and hired them. Certain segment of the media is also part of it and extremist organizations are continuing to exploit these workers via media. They think that they can achieve what the illegal organizations and dirty scenarios failed to achieve by blowing this whole incident out of proportion, using agitation and provocation. I want to address our worker brothers and sisters there once again. You are being used. You have the burden of more than 3 million unemployed, workers, minimum wage-earners, public workers and retirees on your shoulders. There are millions of unemployed citizens and minimum wage-earners in our country who would happily work for the salaries we offer with the 4/C status. My distinguished friends, you should read this plot very well. This incident is no longer about the pursuit of demands and rights by workers but it has turned into a part of the plot against the government. I want to remind the TEKEL workers, who were paid their compensations yesterday, once again that if they wish to continue working in public sector they should sign the contract. I ask for those who participate to the protests to end it and go back to their homes. I want to express it once again that every penny in our Treasury bears the responsibility of our citizens and thus we will never spend it lavishly or carelessly. We will not take the responsibility of our people lightly.
My distinguished brothers and sisters,
This protest is not legal. The protests in Abdi Ipekci and in TURK-IS are illegal. However, we will continue our democratic approach until the end of the month. We will show patience to this illegal process until the end of the month. Once the process regarding the 4/C comes to an end we will take the legal steps whatever they might be. I wanted to express it because Turkey has a serious administration in charge. With the AK Party government there are serious, drastic and promising changes taking place in Turkey. Look at the issues that are being debated just in this last two weeks. It alone proves how much Turkey has changed and turned into a more free and democratic country. There are some dark claims and ugly and dirty plots but what turns this negativity into hope is the fact that all these plots can be openly and freely discussed and criticized and can be taken to justice. While Turkey has become as one to discuss this matter, the main opposition party tries to divert the issue and cover it up as it always does. It continues to divert and block as if it is not on the side of democracy, as if it is not on the side of civilian politics, as if it is not part of the law. Mister Baykal I want to underline the fact that these plots are not aiming not only the AK Party government but also Turkish democracy, civilian politics and national will. Do not think for a second that the plots to weaken AK Party will pave the way to your election to the office. Quit making these cheap plans and for once just defend the democracy, law and civilian politics. Mister Baykal, just defend the law and the right of the people for once. When you look at it, Mister Baykal gives the signal and certain people jumps in to his bandwagon. Just the next day you can see articles and news in the very direction that Mister Baykal pointed.
There are people who get uncomfortable when this matter is being discussed. There are people who want to drag this issue to different arenas. There are people who are on the complete opposite side and give pep talks to the government. We have to act in a responsible way that the seriousness of the state requires. There are people who provoke the agencies of the state and want to force them into a conflict with our government. There are people who find it unusual, wrong and alarming when we meet with our Armed Forces or share a lunch and converse with our police. It is impossible to understand these people. Why are you getting uncomfortable? All the institutions of this state are in perfect harmony. Why are you getting uncomfortable when our country tries to advance as a democracy and as a secular and social state of law? However, we cannot act irresponsibly as they do because we are carrying a huge responsibility on our shoulders. We have to act sensibly, prudently and imperturbably. We have to carefully protect the gains of our people and the well-being of our country. Our sensitivity on the subject cannot be attributed to the effort of keeping the office of AK Party. Our sensitivity, my distinguished friends, is on national will, the institutionalization of democracy and law, and bringing the system up to the modern standards. We are not fighting for office; it is only a struggle for democracy and law. It is not a struggle for personal success; it is a struggle for carrying Turkey to a brighter future and enhancing the right of Turkish people and the law. We want to see the same sensitivity and imperturbation in other politicians. The attitude of Mister Baykal in these claims will go down in history books as a black mark, will be taught in political science courses in the future and it will never be forgotten. I want to remind you the expressions Mister Baykal used on the alleged coup d’état and on the case of Ergenekon: “Scandal, fiasco, fallacy, trap, ambush, an operation of revenge, a showdown with the Republic, nonsense business, crazily ridiculous, tales, things that even an idiot would not believe, the TV series called Ask-I Memnu…”
He uses these descriptions and adjectives for the claims regarding the criminal organizations, an alleged attempt of coup d’état and a case that is brought to the court of law. As you know, he went as far as saying that he is the advocate of these criminal organizations and his friends went to the courtrooms to watch the trials from the seats of the defendant. What has CHP to do on the side of the suspects that are accused of attacking to the Council of State and committing murders there? They always brag about being the political party of Ataturk… If so, do you have the right to bring Ataturk’s political party to those seats?
Turkey is on a historical crossroad and rest assured that the history will record who took which side during this period. I want to address those who accuse as playing the part of the victim… AK Party has never played the role of victim and it never will. On the contrary AK Party did not do what the previous politicians did and it stood tall and it never let our people to bend their heads down. We never surrender to the illegal attempts aiming at us. What did we say? We said that we were going to stand tall but never cause an escalation. We are taking our power from the people and accountable to our nation alone. You will never find AK Party as part of an attempt to bend our people’s head down… There is a certain group or section that criticizes the timing of the revelation of this scenario. Some say that we are wearing Turkish Armed Forces down. Some other people make claims on AK Party and hold us responsible at every stage of the development of this incident from the revelation of the scenario up until today. Other people try to talk us into taking an aggressive stance and deal with the situation. And there are other people who blame our government for everything. These people insist on ignoring the problem and people who are involved in it, they try hard to cover up the incident.
My distinguished friends,
Our criterion in every matter has been democracy and law. We will keep placing the supremacy of law above everything else in such matters. We have been acting this way for the last seven years and we will keep it that way. It is nobody’s place to wear down the institutions and we will not let anyone to do so as being the executive branch. We will not show sympathy those who do wrong and we will let it go unnoticed. We are equally alarmed on the wearing down of our institutions externally as much as we do for the internal wearing down. No one has the right to wear down our institution neither internally nor externally. It is wrong to criticize our institutions due to the personal mistakes and it is equally wrong and damaging to ignore these mistakes. Everybody has to respect law and the legal process and wait for the justice to be served and facts to be discovered. Look, I have mentioned this couple of times the other week: No one can be blamed, punished or seen as a threat due to their language, color, ethnicity, religion and creed. Threat, danger and the concrete risks towards the constitutional order are determined according to the tangible attempts. No one can be labeled, seen as a threat or shown as a potential criminal by saying he/she is Alaouite, Sunni, Turk, Kurd, Romany, Muslim, Christian, Jewish, puts on headscarf, prays, consumes alcohol and so on. If only these people engage in illegal activities and manifest a tangible opposition to the constitutional order then they will be evaluated according to the rules of law. Turkey is a state of law… No one has a privilege over another when facing the state or law. Those who committed a crime will be punished by the independent courts. Surely there will be mechanisms to prevent the crime and there will be intelligence activities but these cannot be done on the expense of breaking the law, damaging the human rights and the honor of people, and especially by seeing your own people as potential threat. The fact that some mistakes on the subject were made in the past does not make it acceptable and certainly it does not make it a traditional method.
There are people asking: “Why today? Why now? Why did you wait for seven years?” I want to respond to them now. Turkey has reached this democratic maturity only today, the right conditions have been formed today. We did not come to this point easily and therefore we are acting carefully. And I want to ask to those who write about it in their columns if they were able to write about this kind of things ten years ago. You were only able to say “as you wish sir”. We know those days very well. The process, which was provoked by the opposition by using baseless concepts such as showdown, revenge and inter-agency conflict, is actually a decisive struggle for democratization exerted by all our 72.5 million people. No matter how the opposition stays out of this process; I observe a strong will coming from our agencies at this point. I want to underline the fact that this process has been executed in perfect cooperation, communication, and coordination among our agencies.
My distinguished friends,
Dear guests,
Today we are discussing matters in Turkey that were accepted as taboos in the past in a civilized and constructive way without hurting one another and being scared. We are bringing problems of every section of our society to the table under the Democratic Opening process and we work to realize the National Unity and Fellowship Project. We are discussing the Kurdish issue, Romany issue and we have just finished the Alaouite Workshop. The final document is being prepared now. We are debating terrorism in depth. We are debating the issues of minorities in our country. We are debating our economic problems without making any distinction between West and East or North and South. We are producing solutions and we are courageously tackling these problems. We meet with all the parties that are involved in these problems and we value their inputs as well. For example, for the first time the state and our Alaouite citizens get together at such a broad extent and we listened to their problems. Now the results of these seven different workshops will be presented to me as a report and we will evaluate that report to set our road map on the issue. We will lay out short, medium and long term plans.
Similarly we work on the issues of our Romany citizens and we have recorded interesting developments there. If you think about who has the largest amount of problems in our country, the public researches show that -among all the ethnicities of Turkey- it is the Romany citizens. I am really sad to report this very fact. Did any of the previous governments do any research on it? What do they say to us? They say where did you come up with this. You are going to bring a new burden to the country. If you are running a country you have to listen and deal with every problem. You cannot choose to deal only with certain problems and leave the rest aside. They are my citizens and my brothers and sisters too; surely I will tackle their problems as well. I consider them as richness for myself and my country. We will make the best use out of it. We cannot run from it as our motto has always been “we love the people for their Creator”. We cannot make any distinction or discrimination. It brings big hopes as Turkey managed to reach this level and established this ground all by itself. AK Party has provided this ground and carried Turkey to this point despite all the threats and blockings. We can achieve even better things. We are going to achieve better things with God’s will and support and prayers of our people. We are going to back up the process with some tangible steps. We are going to eliminate all the barriers and burdens that bear on Turkey’s shoulders and together we will build a brighter future. It is our responsibility –a historical one of that- and we will do whatever this responsibility requires us to do.
My distinguished friends,
As you all know, there is a full-dress debate in the General Assembly and I have to touch upon that. MHP has made an enquiry about our Minister of Labor and today we will vote on whether to discuss this enquiry or not. Surely I do not want to go in details here but if you compare the conditions in the working life today and three and a half years of MHP government, you will spot an enormous difference. We made many reforms that can be described as revolution on every area from the minimum wage, compulsory saving, and housing aid, to May 1st, use of democratic rights, social security and health care system. Now that you are calling for a full-dress debate and make an enquiry on our minister and his ministry then you need intelligence and understanding. I should express that MHP provided AK Party the opportunity to compare their administration with ours by bringing up this enquiry. We are going to make the best use out of this opportunity and tell all our accomplishments for the past seven years and our plans for future in detail.
My distinguished friends,
The whole enquiry incident got way out of hand. These enquiries are being made just to keep the Parliament busy and block its functioning. It is not like anything will come out of these enquiries; it is just for show. I will be in the Parliament for this full-dress debate with all my friends. Those who will watch it on TV will witness it. We would like to hear some fulfilling answers when we ask to them what they have done for this country but up until today they have been unable to provide such answers. I keep saying it: our people gave MHP a five-year term in office and yet they just quitted after three and a half years. Why did you leave? You could not make it work and you never will. They do not have what it takes to make it work. They lack the will, power and understanding. Since they do not have any responsibility, all they do just talking empty. I just mentioned their attitude in the Council of Europe’s Parliamentary Assembly and it proves their real concern.
I wish for a successful week. I welcome all our guests once again. Let your path and destiny be clear. Take care of yourselves.