Turkey’s main opposition leader, head of the Republican People’s Party (CHP) Ozgur Ozel, has asked Ibrahim Kalin, chief of the Erdogan regime’s intelligence service MIT, to prevent Gulenist infiltrations into his party. Ozel explained the move on November 22.

Ozel, widely dubbed the "minister of opposition", made a statement on the matter after receiving a briefing from Kalin at the CHP headquarters.

The CHP never fails in scaling new peaks of stupidity. Each time the observer decides it can't get any more stupid, the party excels itself in reaching a new height.

Ozel’s predecessor Kemal Kilicdaroglu used to come up with decisions that drove all those urging another path, including members of his own party, crazy at the most critical of junctures. His camp was wont to respond with the line that Kilicdaroglu, as a statesman, was dealing with a matter of state and had moved forward with what was necessary despite all the pained reactions of those opposed. The aides spoke as if all of these people were Kilicdaroglu's subjects.

Those capable of looking beyond such guff understood that what had actually occurred was that the president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, had sent some intelligence officers to call on Kilicdaroglu to deliver his orders.

Ekmelettin the Breadman

There are many examples of such incidents and the Ekmelettin incident is one of them.

Prior to the 2014 presidential elections, Kilicdaroglu nominated someone named Ekmelettin as the CHP candidate. To this day, no one in Turkey really knows who Ekmelettin was, where he currently is or even whether he is still alive.

Ekmelettin was not good a good speaker of Turkish. He had grown up in Egypt and lived in some other Arab countries. But his grandparents were from Turkey. Thus, he had Turkish citizenship and was eligible to run in the elections.

He had a slogan, "Ekmek icin Ekmelettin", or "Ekmelettin for Bread". He gained the nickname "Ekmelettin the Breadman".

Video: Turkey is defined as a competitive authoritarian regime. Erdogan wins. Every time.

New level in stupidity

And so it came to pass that for the decade during which Kilicdaroglu was opposition leader, the Turks got comfortable with the idea that he was the top level in stupidity and worse than him was not possible.

Distressingly, however, Ozel appears to have set out to prove them wrong. And he is off to an incredible start.

Document provided by @BYuzuTV: Ozel filed a lawsuit in 2020 to scrap the intelligence clearance requirement in applications for jobs at public institutions.

Appointing a fox to guard the henhouse

Even if Turkey was a normal democracy and the intelligence service was bipartisan, a political party asking for intelligence service clearances for applicants would amount to a big scandal. The tragedy is that Ozel is not aware of it.

Tweet: If a terrorist is identified, he should be caught and tried.

According to Turkey’s political parties law, it is obligatory to ask an applicant wishing to join a party to provide a document showing their criminal record, provided by the justice ministry. Anybody wth a conviction for an act of terrorism cannot be accepted as a party member.

What on earth is this idea of an intelligence clearance? What mug would apply to join your party if they knew it meant they would be probed by Erdogan’s intelligence service?

There again, asking for Kalin’s help in preventing Gulenist infiltrations sounds more logical as Kalin personally knows all of the Gulenists that matter. He was in fact among the leading Gulenists. If the late movement founder Fethullah Gulen had won his fight with Erdogan, Kalin would very likely today be a member of a Gulenist government.

Perhaps Ozel should turn to Erdogan for help in preventing the infiltrations. Like Kalin, the dear leader knows all of those who should be put top of the list of potential infiltrators. Come to think of it, if Fethullah Gulen was alive, asking him to prevent the Gulenist infiltrations would also be a good idea.

Asking Kalin’s help to prevent Gulenist infiltrations is akin to asking MI6 chief Richard Moore to help stop British spies from embedding themselves within the CHP.

Breathtaking. Truly.