İsmail Saymaz, who has been covering the CHP's 38th Ordinary Grand Assembly for two days on behalf of Sözcü TV, was one of the journalists who openly supported Özgür Özel and the changeists.
Especially after the last elections, in the dispute between ‘centrists’ and ‘change-makers’ in the CHP, it became a matter of debate that many journalists exceeded the limits of journalism and acted as political partisans.
On the second day of the CHP congress, İsmail Saymaz, in his broadcast from the congress hall, confessed how he ‘didn't see’ a news that could have changed the outcome of the congress by putting his journalist identity on the back burner to help Özgür Özel and his team win, and perhaps even preventing some political moves that Turkey would talk about for days, perhaps even by Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu.
İsmail Saymaz confessed the great ‘sacrifice’ he made for Özgür Özel to win on live broadcast:
👉 “I knew, but I didn't say it anywhere”https://t.co/uBYqz1Q8MY pic.twitter.com/f0MRUkZtJ3
- Halkweb (@Halkweb) November 5, 2023
CHP Kocaeli MP Tahsin Tarhan, who was on Özgür Özel's key list before the Party Assembly election, was a guest on Sözcü TV.
Meanwhile, İsmail Saymaz shared an important piece of information about Tarhan.
Saymaz said that Tahsin Tarhan, whom Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu appointed to the MYK, which he changed after the May 14-28 elections and assigned as Deputy Chairman in charge of Foreign Affairs, has been supporting the changeists since the beginning and that this information was confirmed to Tahsin Tarhan by himself. “I didn't declare this anywhere. I only said in a program, ‘There are changeists even in Kılıçdaroğlu's MYK.’ I said it in the plural so that it wouldn't be understood. Even the CHP officials denied it. They actually did not know,” he said.
It remains to be seen what Faruk Bildirici will write about whether it was journalistically correct for İsmail Saymaz to keep such important backstage news to himself, considering the political process.