The "AK Party on the 25th Anniversary of its Establishment and the 24th Anniversary of its Coming to Power" program was organized by the AK Party Culture and Art Policies Directorate at the party headquarters, with Minister of Treasury and Finance Mehmet Şimşek, AK Party Deputy Chairman Mustafa Elitaş and Efkan Ala and Deputy Chairman Ömer Çelik and Ahmet Büyükgümüş as speakers.
In his speech at the program, Çelik said that what adds energy to concepts, politics and the path they follow is the "political stance".
Pointing out that the will that brought about the great democratic revolution and transformation in Türkiye was the unity and integrity in these halls, Çelik said, "How did they prevent those who wanted to make democracy and the will of the nation dominant before us? First, they disbanded their organizations. Second, they dispersed the parliamentary groups, but look, even in the darkest days of tutelage, you could not remove even a single neighborhood representative from us. When asked who are the guardians of democracy in Türkiye, you will look at the neighborhood representatives of the AK Party." he said.
Stating that "political parties largely lost their character as political parties" in Türkiye in the early 2000s, Çelik pointed out that the AK Party was established in such a period as a conservative-democratic mass and center party, on the basis of a certain political idea.
Çelik, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's question "Is the AK Party on the right or the left?" "We are not on the right or the left. We represent the political center that represents the social center." "Just as we are in the conservative group in the European Parliament, in the European Council, in the PACE, we also received an invitation from the Socialist International, saying 'come and join us', within the framework of being a center party. Politics is the main energy, the main backbone of all these works we do, the path we walk under the leadership of our President. That is why our greatest work is the AK Party." he said.
Emphasizing that the nation chose the AK Party as the government to solve their problems, Çelik made the following evaluation:
"How the AK Party came to power all over the world, how the AK Party did politics, is still being discussed and similar AK Party's are being established. One of the most important indicators of this is the work we have done in our AK Party to parties from various parts of the world on how to do politics, how to transform society through politics, and how to fulfill the demands of the society."
"Türkiye HAS ONLY ONE AXIS IN FOREIGN POLICY AND THAT IS THE ANKARA AXIS"
Speaking about the AK Party's foreign policy approach and recalling that claims of "Türkiye is experiencing an axis shift" have been made in the past, Çelik said:
"We tried to understand this. What do they want to tell us? What they say is this. If you make your foreign policy western-oriented, you do not experience an axis shift. If you do not make your foreign policy western-oriented, you experience an axis shift in your foreign policy. Therefore, one of our historical transformations is to fight against the concept of 'axis shift'. As our President said, Türkiye has only one axis in foreign policy, and that is the Ankara axis. No axis other than that can direct Türkiye's foreign policy."
Çelik also mentioned that the AK Party government rejected the concept of "weakening your neighbors so you can make yourself safer".
"We don't want any of our neighbors to be weak or poor." Çelik said and continued:
"We do not want the security forces of any of our neighbors to disappear. We want rich neighbors, we want secure neighbors and we want stable neighbors. Because we have learned this and the AK Party taught this to the region. It is this: If we are not all safe, none of us are safe. Therefore, as much as we are safe and stable, all our partners in Syria, Iraq, Iran and the Mediterranean will be safe as well."
Pointing out that some people in Türkiye say that they do the evil they do in the name of "patriotism", Çelik said, "One of the important concepts that the AK Party brought to Türkiye is 'There is no patriotism outside the law.' "Whoever goes beyond the law and talks about patriotism is nothing but treason." made his assessment.
