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A longtime ally of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan resigned as an adviser on Tuesday, after being harshly criticized for calling for the release of jailed opponents in the context of judicial reforms announced by the head of state, AFP reports.
Bulent Arinc, a 72-year-old former deputy prime minister and parliament president, has resigned from the presidency’s High Advisory Council, a body made up of former senior officials whose role is to make recommendations to Erdogan, according to agerpres.ro.
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“I have forwarded my resignation to the president, who received it,” Arinc said in a Twitter statement.
However, he did not say whether he would step down from the AKP presidential party, which he co-founded with Erdogan in 2001.
Erdogan’s travel companion was disavowed by the head of state and harshly criticized by some government media in recent days for asking for the release of Kurdish opponent Selahattin Demirtas and businessman Osman Kavala.
Selahattin Demirtas, former co-chair of the pro-Kurdish HDP party and presidential candidate, was jailed for four years for “terrorism”. Osman Kavala, a leading figure in civil society, has been charged with attempted coup and has been jailed since 2017.
Bulent Arinc made the call after Erdogan had pledged multiple times in the past two weeks that he would implement judicial reforms to strengthen the rule of law in a context of economic hardships that are undermining his popularity.
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These statements by the Turkish president were met with a mixture of skepticism and hope, after several years of repression, especially after a coup attempt in 2016 followed by intense purges.
“Turkey needs reforms in the judiciary, economy and other sectors, that’s obvious,” Arinc said Tuesday, denouncing the “hatred” and “insults” he claims to target.
“We must calm our country and find a solution to the concerns of our fellow citizens,” he added.
Bulent Arinc also caused surprise in 2015, denouncing the growing concentration of power in Erdogan’s hands. “It was ‘us’ and we became ‘me’,” he complained.
Arinc’s resignation comes less than three weeks after the resounding departure of the powerful finance minister Berat Albayrak, the president’s son-in-law, who resigned for health reasons.
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