Ekinci, the vice chairman of the ruling AKP’s Administrative Committee, had criticised the AKP’s electoral campaign for the March 31 local polls, which he said had alienated Kurdish voters leading to the loss in Istanbul.
The AKP official was damning about President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s use of the phrase “get out of Turkey” when addressing Kurdish lawmakers of the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP).
This kind of “harshness” had lost the ruling party the sizable Kurdish vote in the tightly run race for Turkey’s largest city, Ekinci side.
Ekinci also levelled criticism at what he called waste at local municipalities, and at the AKP’s general handling of the economy, which fell into a recession at the end of 2018.
The vice chairman said citizens had criticised the close relations AKP local administrations had formed with contracting firms, which had reaped the rewards of public tenders while masses of AKP voters had seen no improvement in their conditions.
Star, one of Turkey’s highest circulation daily newspapers, is known for its partisan pro-AKP stance and rarely brooks criticism of the ruling party on its pages.
True to form, Ekinci’s interview with Star reporter Fadime Özkan was removed from the Star website on Tuesday.