Irritated by accusations of lavishness, Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan has vowed to resign if the leader of the main opposition can find a single golden toilet seat in his vast new palace.<\/p>\n
Kemal Kilicdaroglu of the Republican People’s Party (CHP) has repeatedly criticized Erdogan’s profligacy in campaign speeches ahead of a June 7 parliamentary election.<\/p>\n
“Gentlemen in Ankara, palaces have been built for you, planes bought, Mercedes cars purchased … golden seats have been bought, that’s how you use the toilet,” Kilicdaroglu said at a rally in the Aegean city of Izmir on Saturday.<\/p>\n
Erdogan, who moved into the controversial new 1,000-room palace complex after winning a presidential election last August, challenged Kilicdaroglu to prove his assertion.<\/p>\n
“I invite him to please come and take a tour … I wonder if he will be able to find such a golden toilet seat in any of these washrooms,” Erdogan said in an interview with state broadcaster TRT late on Sunday.<\/p>\n
“If he finds it, I will resign from the presidency.”<\/p>\n
Brightly illuminated at night and sitting on a hilltop, the complex – nicknamed Ak Saray or the White Palace – dominates the skyline on the western edge of the Turkish capital.<\/p>\n
Previous heads of state used a more modest old palace, but Erdogan’s move came as he launched what he has dubbed a “New Turkey”, in which he aspires to amend the constitution and create a full executive presidential system.<\/p>\n
Erdogan wants the ruling AK Party, which he founded more than a decade ago, to win a strong enough majority on June 7 to change the constitution unopposed, but opinion polls suggest it will struggle to do so.<\/p>\n
–<\/p>\n
Source: Reuters<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Irritated by accusations of lavishness, Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan has vowed to resign if the leader of the main opposition can find a single golden toilet seat in his vast new palace. Kemal Kilicdaroglu of the Republican People’s Party (CHP) has repeatedly criticized Erdogan’s profligacy in campaign speeches ahead of a June 7 parliamentary election. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":20,"featured_media":121459,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[14],"class_list":["post-121458","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-papa-owusu-ankomah"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121458","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/20"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=121458"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121458\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/121459"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=121458"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=121458"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=121458"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}