President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan spoke at the AK Party Candidate Presentation Meeting held at Ankara Chamber of Commerce Congresium.
In his speech, President Erdoğan noted the following;
I would like to thank each and every one of you for your presence at the meeting where we will announce some more of the names that will represent our party and our alliance as mayoral candidates in the March 31, 2024 elections. As you know, on January 7, we shared the names of 26 metropolitan and provincial mayoral candidates in Istanbul with our nation. Today, we are announcing the rest of our metropolitan and provincial mayoral candidates. I congratulate our candidates in advance and wish them success in their election campaigns and in the services they will provide to our cities.
Thus, we have announced all our metropolitan and provincial mayoral candidates except for 7 provinces where we will support the candidates of the Nationalist Movement Party, our partner in the People’s Alliance. Starting next Saturday, we will also introduce our district candidates starting from Istanbul. We will complete the introduction of our district mayoral candidates in a short time by personally visiting some cities and sending our deputy chairmen to others.
“On January 30th, we will present our election manifesto to the appreciation of our nation”
Our goal is to win the municipalities in the hands of the AK Party and the People’s Alliance with overwhelming rates again, as well as to introduce real municipalism to our cities in the hands of the opposition. For this, we are preparing for the elections with mayors who will devote themselves to their cities with all their hearts and minds, who will always be with our nation at every step and every moment. Inshallah, on January 30th, we will present our election manifesto to the appreciation of our nation. As it is known, according to the election calendar, candidate lists must be submitted to the election boards on February 20 at the latest. Our intention is to finish all preparations for the candidates before February 20 and devote all our time and energy to our election campaign.
We want to take our journey of serving our people through municipalities, which we started exactly 30 years ago in 1994 in Istanbul, to the top in 2024 when we step into the Turkish Century. Are we ready for this? As a party that has marched to power with its success in municipalities, we have to keep the place where we first proved our mettle strong. We seek to bring every municipality of our country with its metropolitan, provincial, district and towns to levels worthy of the Turkish Century with our works and service politics. We will work and produce with love, perseverance and determination, feeling the responsibility of every vote given to us in the ballot box at every moment of our duties, and we will reveal our difference. We have never been and will never be one of those who seek to protect their seats by hiding behind various concepts, values, symbols and ideological blindness, even though they have never given anything to their cities and the people living there.
“We have been one of those who entered the hearts of our nation with day and night work”
We have always been the ones who have entered the hearts of our nation with the love in our hearts, the projects in our minds, our unstinting labor, the sweat on our foreheads and our day and night work. Whoever does not look at the offices that come through politics, including mayorship, parliamentary deputy, and organizational management, with this perspective, the AK Party is not the right door for him. If there are those who aspire to be the judge of their city instead of being the servant of their city through the mayorship, AK Party is not the right address for them. If there is a person who sets his eyes on the ballot box without being concerned with the problems of his city, without being integrated with the goals of his country, without being equipped with the problems of his nation, the AK Party is not the right channel for him. The AK Party is not the place for those who have the smallest mistake, the smallest flaw against our nation, like Yunus Emre, who did not even bring a crooked piece of wood through the door of Taptuk Emre. As a cadre that determined its name as the movement of virtues at the stage of its establishment, we can never approve of another understanding of politics, we can never enter such a path.
“On March 31st, we are once again aspiring to deliver works to our cities”
Hamdolsun, we have always appeared before our nation in this way until today. This is how we have worked for the government in the municipalities for 30 years. This is how we have brought our country to its current level. This is how we won the Presidential and Parliamentary elections last May together with our partners in the People’s Alliance. This is how we will assume the responsibility of managing the municipalities in the first local government elections of the Turkish Century on March 31st. To put it in the language of the poet; This square is a battlefield, let the one whose essence is strong come. This is a caravan of service, let the one whose word is strong come. Let the one whose trace is strong in the atlas of public service in the essence of love, in the libra that smells of labor come. The crooked will be destroyed to the ground and the right bow will become a sting. Let the one who has a kavi come who has a kavi excursion. We, as a cadre whose word is strong in the battlefield, who has a trace in public service, who has an arrow on the right bow, we are once again aspiring to give works to our cities and serve our nation on March 31st.
“They tried to make our country pay a price”
We have left behind the first century of our Republic and stepped into its second century, which we call the Turkish Century. In this historical process, as a country, we are going through difficult challenges again. On the one hand, for more than 10 years, the cries of those who want to bring our country to its knees by creating chaos, inciting terrorism, attempting coups, setting economic traps continue uninterruptedly. They wanted to overthrow the government by stirring the streets with the Gezi Events. When they failed in the face of our determined stance, they tried to make our country pay a price. They wanted to take the country captive with FETÖ’s December 17-25 plot and July 15 coup attempt. When they failed in the face of our nation, they tried to make our country pay a price. They wanted to occupy the neighborhoods they dug around with trenches using the PKK. When our security forces buried them in the pits they dug, they tried to make our country pay a price. They attempted to harass our borders by directing the DAESH project, which plagued our region, to our country. When we unmasked this with the operations we organized, they tried to make our country pay a price. They wanted to establish a terroristan along our borders with the separatist organization, which they supported by giving different names and whose members they trained and equipped. When we disrupted this project with our cross-border operations, they wanted to make our country pay a price.
“They will not surrender us and our country under any circumstances”
None of the events that have befallen us in recent days, including the dastardly attacks on our troops across the border, are independent of this picture. As we show that we will not compromise on the interests of our country and the goals of our nation, we face new traps in every political, diplomatic, economic and military field. By doing so, they think that they will scare us, intimidate us, discourage us and make us consent to their imperialist ambitions. Of course, they neither know the Turkish nation nor us as a son of it. I would like to express this very clearly; they will never make us take a step back. They will never be able to turn us from our path. They will not be able to surrender us and our country under any circumstances. Sooner or later, they will learn that Turkey is no longer a country that can be brought into line with threats and insidious games. We will teach them this again, just as we did a century ago. God willing, we will achieve this together as 85 million people.
