Common Life Network stands by pollster Bekir Ağırdır

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The Common Life Network (Ortak Yaşam Ağı/OYA) issued today (May 19) a written statement supporting Bekir Ağırdır, the general manager of the polling company KONDA, a prominent pollster in Turkey.

OYA is an initiative started on April 11 this year by "citizens who have different identities and political opinions and who do not accept citizenship being just spectators of their own lives and their disasters or allowers of the same."

Ağırdır was pointed as a target by Süleyman Soylu, the Interior Minister and İstanbul MP of the Justice and Development Party (AKP) on a live TV program in the evening on May 17 on tv100 TV channel.

OYA says in its statement, "Süleyman Soylu continues to commit hate crimes. 

"The ugly statements he has made about our friend Bekir Ağırdır are totally baseless, or based on lies, and this is an operation of defamation, and pointing as a target.

"We invite Soylu to apologize and the prosecutors to do their duty."

What happened?

AKP İstanbul MP Süleyman Soylu accused Bekir Ağırdır of being an "influence spy" and said, "0,5 points or 1 point of deviation is normal in the polls. There is a poll mafia in Turkey and Bekir Ağırdır is carrying out an operation in Turkey. This man is the influence spy of the international system in Turkey. 

"Turkey should get rid of these men. Research work should be scientific. You do not have any possibility to get wrong if you have created your regional samples. Turkey has waved a flag at social media anarchy, to defamations in these elections."  (TY/PE)