(TBMM) - CHP Group Chairman Özgür Özel said, "I call out to the living room politicians who look down on the nation from their ivory towers, see the nation as ants, and try to crush anyone who raises their head. The cry of the people who turn us around on the road and say 'We cannot make ends meet, save us' is not in vain. Just as you do not see this, the nation does not see salvation in you anymore. There is only one place where the nation sees salvation. That is the ballot box. It is the march of the Republican People's Party to power. The elected Republican People's Party." "It is his party," he said.
Özel spoke at his party's weekly group meeting in the Turkish Grand National Assembly. Criticizing the decision taken by the European Parliament regarding the Cyprus Peace Operation, Özel said:
"As the CHP, we condemn, reject and curse in the harshest terms the decision taken in the European Parliament regarding the Cyprus Peace Operation, which tries to tarnish our operation army with disgusting accusations, I do not say unfair, but disgusting accusations. In a place that was subjected to severe persecution for years, massacres amounting to genocide, and where peace could not be achieved despite all efforts, Karaoğlan, the late Ecevit, the late Deputy Prime Minister of the day, By sending our army to Cyprus with Erbakan, we did not invade Cyprus with the successful operations of both the airborne brigade and the landing fleets, but went so far as to establish peace, brought peace to both the Turkish side and the Greek side, who went to the island not for war, as Ecevit had heralded that day, but for peace, and did their duty in the operation they participated in, died if necessary, but has never faced even the slightest accusation of a war crime, and has never, ever been anywhere near. "As the CHP Group, we embrace all our veterans and the families of our martyrs with gratitude and kiss their hands in the face of this slander that cannot be put forward, may God have mercy on those who are still dead, and is trying to be hurled at our pure and bright Cyprus veterans who are standing tall," he said.
Referring to the death of 16-year-old Yiğit Mehmet Kesme in Osmaniye, at the workplace where he worked within the scope of the MESEM project, Özel said, "We wish God's mercy on Yiğit and patience to his family. However, only this year in Türkiye, 34 children lost their lives in work-related murders while working. 21 of them were working within the scope of MESEM. While he was busy changing the name of the indecent, unqualified, incompetent War of Independence, appointed to the head of national education, our children were at his place of duty." "While this MESEM project has not claimed a life or lost a limb in Germany for 40 years, we will not ask those people to account for our 21 children in the MESEM project, but from whom will we ask?" he said.
Özel said that the biggest and most fundamental problem in Türkiye is injustice, and that injustice is not limited to the courts, and continued his words as follows:
"When the scales of justice are tipped, the great injustice in income and taxes becomes the issue that hurts the citizens the most. In the past, there were economic crises. The 1994 crisis and the 2001 crisis either ended that year or began to heal the next year. But we have been in an endless crisis since 2018. We have been in an environment of multiple crises since the day the one-man regime was adopted. Crises that trigger each other, crises that follow each other, crises that never end." "And as a result, we are first in Europe and fifth in the world with an inflation rate of 32 percent. We are first in Europe and fifth in the world with a food inflation rate of 35 percent. These are all official data in the categories of poverty, unemployment, income inequality and tax injustice."
And 65 percent of the income in Türkiye is collected through indirect taxes, which is the world's most unfair tax system that does not discriminate between rich and poor, that is, Türkiye's richest man and the poorest man pay the same tax on shopping. 24 percent comes from income tax, half of which is taxes deducted from your salaries. The other part is income from deposits in the bank, etc. When you add this to the total of 65, it is 89 percent. In Türkiye, those who are supposed to pay taxes, who earn money, produce, serve, make a profit, and pay taxes on the profits they make, pay 11 percent of the total tax, while those who should pay much less or no tax pay 89 percent of the total tax. This is the black order of the AK Party that has been imposed on Türkiye for 25 years. The main goal of our government is to first change this unfair tax system, destroy the AK Party's black system and introduce a fair tax system.
I always talk about hunger and poverty lines. The hunger limit is the sum of kitchen expenses that would be enough to feed a family of 4 people for 1 month. Türk-İş calculates this. He's been calculating for years, decades, 50 years. and Türk-İş announces this every month. The hunger limit announced by Türk-İş is 35 thousand 750 liras. As a rough calculation, today there are 29 million people in the country receiving fixed monthly payments. Retirees, workers, disabled people, widows and education pension recipients. There are 12.5 million unemployed people who do not receive any salary. Total 41.5 million people. 41.5 million people is higher than the population of 157 countries in the world. and 41.5 million people in Türkiye live below the hunger line. The situation of the unemployed is already miserable.
But in this country, being active is not enough to get rid of poverty. In this country, the more people work, the poorer they become. They work in agriculture, they plant and harvest, they are poorer than last year. They work in industry, they earn minimum wage, they are poorer than last year. Türkiye is one of the very rare countries where workers are impoverished. Again, there is no other example in the world like Turkey, where educated people are more likely to be unemployed. As education increases, the unemployment rate increases. Universities opened everywhere, departments opened without planning in this country deprived of the State Planning Organization. An unplanned, unscheduled, irregular education system that trains 40 engineers while one engineer needs 40 intermediate staff, leaves them unemployed and cannot train the intermediate staff that is in demand. All of these are bringing these multiple crises to this country.
The poverty line is 116 thousand 500 lira. In a family of four, if all four of them live on minimum wage, their salary is 112 thousand lira. A family of 4, four of them will work day and night in the factory, but they will still be below the poverty line. We live in such an order. The lowest pension is 20 thousand liras, the biggest disloyalty in world history. Work for years, struggle, your elbows get bruised, your hands get calloused, your glasses get bigger, your ears don't hear, 20 thousand lira pension the day you say 'you can move on, relax'. We say 'Let's fix it'. Let him pay only the part of the inflation, which is the TURKSTAT inflation this year, and live on 23 thousand 500 liras for the next 6 months. A year ago, the number of people receiving the lowest pension was 4 million people. Today, the number of people receiving the lowest pension is 5.1 million people. So we are faced with such a thing that in one year 1.1 million people joined those with the lowest pensions. In the past, the lowest pension, I say in terms of ratio, was 20 thousand liras, while the average pension was 29 thousand liras. Now it had dropped from 20 thousand liras to 23. Now 1 million 100 thousand more people have come there. In other words, just as a can of coke becomes smaller when you press it by kicking it from the top, this government has brought the average pension to 15 percent above the minimum pension by hitting the retirees' head. Think about it, on average, all retirees receive a pension that is 15 percent above the minimum pension. That's why the number of people experiencing misery increases day by day.
I call out to the living room politicians who look down on the nation from their ivory towers, who see the nation as ants, and who try to crush anyone who raises their head. The cries of the people who stopped us on the road and said, 'We cannot make ends meet, save us' are not in vain. Just as you do not see this, the nation no longer sees salvation in you. There is only one place where the nation sees salvation. And that is the ballot box. It is the march of the Republican People's Party to power. It is the elected Republican People's Party.
We regretfully witness in all provincial visits that the producers complain not only about not being able to earn money, but also about not being able to save their costs. Pistachio producers in Gaziantep say this. When you go to the cherry orchard, the cherry grower in Niğde says this. Tea producers in Trabzon and Rize say this. Hazelnut producers in Giresun and Ordu say this. Cotton producers in the Aegean or Adana say this. Wheat producers all over Türkiye, Anatolia and Thrace say this. The cost is here, the base price is here, the actual purchase is even lower. They give a price of 16.5 lira for wheat, which costs 21 lira, as calculated by the chambers of agriculture, when all costs are included correctly. Protein account, I don't know what account, buys wheat for 14 lira, 13 lira at the expense of the one who prints the money.
Therefore, while this great injustice remains for the producer, those who consume these products complain about not being able to buy them. First time I've seen this. From Datça Market in Muğla, he wrote: '5 installments of vegetables and fruits to your credit card'. They would tell us about that quarter watermelon, we wouldn't believe it, right? They used to say that our country is one of the seven self-sufficient countries. This is something that was written in textbooks in the 1980s and 1990s and told by teachers and which we did not believe: 'There are such countries where half a watermelon is sold. Half a watermelon.' It's unbelievable. On the other hand, we have now seen; In our own country, in this land of abundance and abundance, we see quarter watermelons. We see people selling fruits and vegetables for 5 installments via credit card.
Look, apples are picked from the tree and sold for 18 liras. Its price in the market is 150 lira. Cherry on the tree, I saw it with my own eyes, all of Türkiye who watched heard it with its ears. "They buy it for 60 liras," he says in the cherry orchard in Niğde. So, how much does the collector earn per day? He says 2 thousand liras. How many kilos do you say he packs? He says 40 kilos at most. You divide it, the collection cost comes out to be 50 lira. He says food and travel costs 60 liras. He sells his cherries for 60 liras. You go to the market to buy 200 lira. Strawberries are bought for 43 liras and sold for 250 liras. Apricots cost 20 lira on the tree, 110 lira in the market. Watermelon costs 8 lira in the field and 30 lira in the market. Here is the black order of the AK Party. Here is the heavy cost to this nation of keeping the AK Party in power.
On the other hand, we said we would continue. There used to be 'akpden.com'. The first site is left to sultancilar, the second site is left to butlancilar, they do not use it. We also made 'akpden.net'. This time there is a mobile phone bill on 'akpden.net'. Cheapest tariff. 9 GB internet is never enough for young people. 750 minutes of talk, 500 SMS, price 310 lira. But when you add it to your cart on 'akpden.net', look what you see. The first facility special communication tax is 58.33 lira. Special communication tax is 31 lira. Value added tax is 68 lira. Wireless usage fee is 26.98 lira, stamp duty is 4.74 lira. Total tax is 190 lira. Package 310 lira, tax 190 lira, invoice 500 lira. Here is the heavy cost to the nation of keeping the Justice and Development Party in power. 'akpden.net', along with the game console, mobile phone, computer and motorcycle accounts we announced in previous weeks, is presented to our nation for review and evaluation when it goes to the polls.