The independent candidate for the presidency of Turkey, leader of the Vatan (Rodina) party Dogu Perincek said that if he wins the presidential election, the country will withdraw from NATO. The politician told this in an interview with RIA Novosti.
According to him, the alliance sees Ankara as an enemy, despite the fact that Turkey has been part of the North Atlantic bloc since 1953.
“The US is helping the terrorist Kurdish groups, supplying them with weapons, so Turkey and the United States are already in an unfriendly relationship,” he said.
Perincek explained that if he wins, “American aircraft will fly home from the Incirlik airbase, and the base itself will completely pass under the control of the Turkish military.” The politician added that in March Israel, Greece, Cyprus and the United States conducted exercises in the eastern Mediterranean against Turkey.
The 75-year-old Maoist Dogu Perincek advocates the development of friendly relations with Beijing and Moscow, and calls for an end to the interaction with Brussels. He was in prison on charges of organizing a coup in 2007. He actively opposes the recognition of the Armenian Genocide in the Ottoman Empire in 1915. So, while in Switzerland, he called the Armenian Genocide a “big international lie”. The local court called him guilty of racial discrimination, sentenced to 90 days in prison and a fine of three thousand Swiss francs. The European Court of Human Rights found the decision of the Swiss authorities illegal, noting that they violated Perincek’s freedom of expression.
The son of Perinchek Mehmet is a professor of history who speaks Russian fluently and wrote after work in Russian archives a book about the relations between the two countries during the Ottoman Empire.