On the evening of Jan. 29, the now retired politician Bulent Arinc, the longtime deputy prime minister and parliament speaker of the Justice and Development Party (AKP), appeared on a CNNTurk talk show with remarks that sent shock waves through Turkish politics. He spoke on various issues, from the failed peace process with Kurdish separatists to the witch hunt on “the parallel state,” to the “trolls” who demonize people on behalf of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. In all such issues, he never openly opposed Erdogan, let alone denounced him. Yet, still his remarks were perceived as a vehement protest against the president’s growing domination of the ruling AKP and Turkey’s overall political system.
One particular issue in which Arinc clearly differed from Erdogan dealt with the behind the scenes of the controversial “Dolmabahce Agreement” between the AKP government and the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democracy Party (HDP) declared in February 2015. This was a major step forward in the then-active “peace process” between Turkey and the armed and outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), but Erdogan had strangely condemned this deal, suggesting he was not informed about it, inflicting a major blow on the peace process that he himself had initiated two years before. But now, on CNN Turk, Arinc said that Erdogan knew about the details of the meeting from the beginning.
