In Turkey, the day was to be devoted to the solemn opening of the new parliamentary session in Ankara. It began with the din of a suicide attack in the heart of the Turkish capital before ending in a warning speech, filled with cold and dark anger delivered by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan followed, barely two hours later, by a press release from the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) claiming responsibility for the morning’s attack.
It is 9 a.m. when an ordinary gray van slowly approaches the entrance to the Ministry of the Interior before stopping. The scene is recorded by a surveillance camera. We see the front passenger get out and advance, gun in hand, shoot several times and blow himself up in front of the police box. The driver gets out of the vehicle and runs off in turn, but disappears from the image before being shot dead by the police. ” A ball in the head “the Minister of the Interior, Ali Yerlikaya, clarified a little later.
The ministry building is located about two hundred meters from Parliament. The high-power explosion is heard several kilometers away. Two police officers were slightly injured. The neighborhood is cordoned off. Very quickly, the attorney general’s office announced the opening of an investigation and described the attack as “terrorist”. The prosecution also imposed an information blackout, requiring Turkish media to stop broadcasting images of the attack.
It is in this tense context that the Head of State went on foot, early in the afternoon, to the Turkish Grand National Assembly for the inaugural session of Parliament. Standing in front of all the deputies, Recep Tayyip Erdogan first spoke of the needs, according to him, for a new constitution, before condemning the “terrorists” And “scoundrels who threaten peace and security”but who do not have “not achieved their goals and will never achieve them”.
Negotiations at a standstill since 2018
And then, without transition, the head of state once again attacks the European Union. “Turkey no longer expects anything from the EU which has made us wait at its door for sixty years”castigated the president. “We have kept all the promises we made to the EU but they have kept almost none of theirs”he denounced, adding that he “will not tolerate new requirements or conditions to the membership process” of Turkey.
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