Erdoğan vows to keep youth at center of political life

SAMSUN

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan speaks with youth during the ‘Youth Meetings’ event in northern province of Samsun. (AA Photo)

President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has pledged to put young people at the center of Turkish politics, saying their participation is a matter of political will and that they will carry responsibility for the country’s future.

“Putting young people at the center of politics, remember, is a matter of will,” Erdoğan said during a meeting with young people in the northern province of Samsun.

Erdoğan said his ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) had worked with young people throughout its 25-year history and his more than five decades in politics.

He highlighted a constitutional amendment lowering the minimum age for parliamentary candidates from 30 to 18 as an example of efforts to expand young people’s role in politics. He also cited government support for youth in education, sports, public administration, culture, the arts and civil society.

“Tomorrow, you will take over the captain’s bridge of Türkiye,” Erdoğan told the gathering, saying young people “would be responsible for serving the country’s 86 million people as well as millions of people around the world who place their hopes in Türkiye.”

He urged young people to embrace a lasting sense of purpose rooted in history and cultural heritage, saying their generation should connect the present with the past.

Erdoğan also recalled the Sept. 12, 1980, military coup, whose 46th anniversary fell on the previous day, saying young people had been subjected to torture, imprisonment and executions during the period.

“Unfortunately, these coup-minded people consumed the young people of that period in this way. Many of those young people were killed,” Erdoğan said. “Our hope is that such things will not happen again.”

He called for an end to political violence and urged young people to build the country’s future through their work and contributions.

“Let no young people be killed, one from the right and one from the left,” he said. “Let everyone continue on their path with their heads held high, and let young people prepare the Türkiye of the future with their work and everything they have.”

He said the government’s aim was to prevent such abuses from recurring and pledged to continue meeting with young people to discuss their ideas, demands and needs.

“We will continue to embrace young people and walk alongside them,” he said.

Answering questions from young people after his speech, Erdoğan said his government’s “terror-free Türkiye” process had improved security in the country’s southeastern and eastern regions.

“Now the goal is to bring a peaceful atmosphere to the whole of the southeast and east on a larger scale,” he said.