Muharrem Ince's press release on the elections:
The duty of politicians is to first understand the society we live in and then to convince the voters in line with the proposals we present to the society. It is not possible to do politics without understanding the society. Understanding the feelings and thoughts of the voters, listening to them, learning their expectations should be the priority of the politician. If you accuse those who do not vote for you of being ignorant, uninformed and selling themselves for pasta and coal, you will have nowhere to go.
For 1000 years, politics cannot be done without understanding the heritage of thought coming from the depths of history of these people who have endeavoured to make these lands their home. This nation, which stood against the Crusades to stay in Anatolia, struggled to be uprooted from these lands a hundred years ago. The last stronghold of the Turks came from the Balkans, the Caucasus and other Ottoman legacy places is Anatolia, the last homeland where they can go.
On 15 July 2016, you need to understand the emotional world of the crazy Turks who jumped on the bullets lying under the tanks on the day of 15 July 2016 and burned their crops without blinking so that the planes could not take off. The most important priority of this nation is to defend its homeland. That is why every Turk is born a soldier, that is why the Army is the prophet's hearth, that is why this society does not give up on Ataturk and always remembers him with deep respect and love.
The people of these lands have been on KIYAM and in defence of the homeland for a thousand years. They rightly see the PKK and its extensions, FETÖ and its collaborators as a threat to their homeland and demand that they be fought at all costs.
It is not to know the nation to think that the images given with the PKK and the FETO, which the nation sees as a threat to its homeland, will be ignored without seeing these reflexes of the nation, hoping to benefit from the negativities in the economy and the earthquake.
Not seeing the feelings aroused by the work done in the defence industry, the UAV, UCAV, ships and aircrafts, not seeing the feelings aroused by the work done in the defence industry, and appearing to be against them is not to know the nation at all.
Salon politicians do not hear, understand and know these. In order to understand the nation, you need to be in the field. I said that I have been travelling these lands for 3 years and that the nation is fed up with this government but does not trust this opposition.
I said that the election could not be taken in the first round. I said that these opposition barons, who caused deep disappointment to our people with these stories, had no other concern but to protect their own small power. I said that we are on the road as those who do not want this film to be put on stage again and again.
I said that the table of 6 is a fictitious coalition, a political engineering project, a project that has no equivalent at the base without listening to the voices of the bases of the parties. I said that an alliance that can only determine who the candidate will be in 13 meetings will not give confidence to the voters, and that the voters who see the inconsistency here will not vote for the components of the table, who do not consent to the components of the table, who see the unity at the table as a matter of interest, not principle.
I said that the society has an objection to the structure of the table and the candidate at the grassroots and we cannot ignore this. Politics is done to make the voice of the society heard. The political institution is in charge of offering choices to the electorate. An election without options cannot be a democratic election. Presenting offering options as splitting the votes is an imposition. There is no division of votes in two-step type elections. The polling firms working for the Cumhur Alliance say that Erdoğan will win in the first round and the polling firms working for the Millet Alliance say that Kılıçdaroğlu will win in the first round, I said these are the results announced to the public on order.
In reality, Turkiye is divided between the central power and the power of local administrations. I said that while the central government shares the public resources in the centre among its own supporters, feeds media organs close to itself and makes untrue propaganda to its supporters, the opposition, which represents its power in local governments, carries out similar practices by using public resources in the locality.
In order to get rid of the government that brought the country to this situation, our nation does not have to carry marginal groups that they will never approve of to power, people who have a problem with the republic and Atatürk. I said that those who have a problem with the basic principles of our republic, the founders of our country and the founding philosophy do not have to support under the guise of opposition.
Instead of listening to what I said, the opposition tried to silence me with all their might and tried to knock me out of the game. A perception was created as if the election was being taken and I was preventing it. The PKK members who fled abroad and some executives in the CHP, to which I have given years of my life, in cooperation with Fetö, made a slander and defamation campaign that will go down in political history through social media. Although these were in front of everyone's eyes, those who could supposedly stop this unlawful influx turned a blind eye and a deaf ear.
Fresh water opponents, artists, writers who think that they will transform the country only by tweeting, only by complaining, only by discussing in WhatsApp groups, all demanded that I withdraw from the candidacy. And I withdrew.
According to some, my withdrawal from the candidacy was political suicide, and I took this risk, because if I had not withdrawn, I would have been declared the sole responsible for today's scene. Now everyone says that Muharrem İnce was right. Yes, but only after 'Basra was ruined'*. *(A local idiom for after it's too late)
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