Osman Durmuş -- a deputy from the MHP -- drew the indignation of AK Party deputies when he made fun of news reports over GATA’s refusal to allow Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s wife to enter the hospital to call on thespian Nejat Uygur in 2007 because she wears a headscarf.Emine Erdoğan was hoping to pay a get-well visit to Uygur but was told that she would not be allowed to enter the hospital with her headscarf on.
The MHP’s Durmuş angered AK Party deputies when he said: “How dare you not allow the wife of a prime minister, who is accepted as a prophet, to enter GATA? Who do you think you are?” AK Party deputy group chairman Bekir Bozdağ said it was tactlessness to call the prime minister a “prophet.”
Erdoğan was dubbed a “prophet” in November by the AK Party provincial chairman in Aydın, İsmail Hakkı Eser, who said, “We are so loyal to our prime minister and AK Party leader Erdoğan that he is a second prophet for us.”
Erdoğan also lashed out at the MHP deputy and said no one should refer to him in this way. “This is unconscionable and immoral. You seek to both garner votes over covered women and defend those who do not allow my wife to enter GATA with her headscarf,” he said.
As the prime minister kept talking, some MHP deputies exchanged punches with the AK Party’s Orhan Erdem. Ali Koyuncu, an AK Party deputy, collapsed during the fight and was rushed to a nearby hospital. Angered by the fistfight, Erdoğan left Parliament.
