Criminal complaint from Ümit Özdağ for bilingual signs in Diyarbakır

Victory Party Chairman Ümit Özdağ came to the Ankara Courthouse and filed a criminal complaint with the Ankara Chief Public Prosecutor's Office regarding the preparation of some avenues, streets and direction signs in Turkish and Kurdish in Diyarbakır.

Özdağ, who made a statement in front of the courthouse after the criminal complaint, stated that the application was about the administrators of Diyarbakır Metropolitan Municipality and the mayors and administrators of the relevant district municipalities.

Pointing to Article 3 of the Constitution, Özdağ stated that it is mandatory for public services to be carried out in Turkish and said:

"Article 3 of our Constitution very clearly states that Turkey is indivisible with its country and nation and that its language is Turkish. It is a necessity that public services be provided in Turkish. However, both the separatist organization and the political parties representing the same political line as the separatist organization and the mayors formed by these political parties have been operating under the name of 'multilingual municipality' for years, violating the Constitution and laws, and they have begun to use languages other than Turkish in many public services, especially traffic signs." “They are leaving.”

Referring to the decision of the 8th Chamber of the Council of State regarding Sur Municipality in 2007, Özdağ said:

"However, there is a decision taken by the Council of State on this issue. With the decision of the 8th Chamber of the Council of State, dated May 22, 2007, regarding the Sur Municipality, this bilingual practice was banned and both the mayor and the municipal council were dismissed. While this decision is still valid, we now see that such signs are being tried to be brought to the fore all over Turkey, in Southeastern Anatolia. And we invite the judiciary to take action on this issue. That is why we filed this criminal complaint."

When asked by a journalist what his expectations were from the judiciary, Özdağ gave the following answer:

"We are waiting for the implementation of the law. We are waiting for the mandatory provision of the Constitution and the decision of the Council of State on this issue to be implemented. At the moment, there is an unlawful situation. And there is not even an attempt to put a legal cover on the actual situation. This is considered normal. This is not normal. This is against the law. In other words, when you break the law at another point, the judiciary takes action, but why does the judiciary not take action when it is clear that the law has been broken and the Constitution has been violated? Here, we made this application for the judiciary to take action, in the criminal complaint “we were found.”