OAN’s Brooke Mallory
12:41 PM – Thursday, December 14, 2023
Two days after having a heart attack and collapsing at Parliament after ending a speech that condemned Israel, a Turkish opposition legislator died on Thursday.
In televised remarks, Health Minister Fahrettin Koca informed reporters that Hasan Bitmez, 54, a member of parliament from the opposition Felicity (Saadet) Party, had passed away at Ankara City Hospital.
According to his Parliament biography excerpt, Bitmez was a graduate of Al Azhar University in Cairo, the chairman of the Centre for Islamic Union Research, and had previously held positions in Islamic non-governmental organizations.
He was also a married father of one child.
Bitmez was shown collapsing to the ground while at the podium on Tuesday’s televised Parliament broadcast. He also hit his head as he fell.
Bitmez had a lengthy history of criticizing the ruling AK Party (AKP) and President Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey for the nation’s trade relationship with the Jewish State.
“You allow ships to go to Israel, and you shamelessly call it trade… You are Israel’s accomplice,” Bitmez said in his speech after putting a sign on the podium that read, “Murderer Israel; collaborator AKP.”
“You have the blood of Palestinians on your hands, you are collaborators. You contribute to every bomb Israel drops on Gaza,” he told legislators during a debate over the foreign ministry’s 2024 budget.
Bitmez had abruptly collapsed to the ground after concluding his furious declaration, prompting other lawmakers to bolt from their seats to help assist him.
Following the incident, Koca stated that a hospital’s angiography showed that Bitmez’s heart’s two major veins were completely blocked.
An angiography is a “medical imaging technique used to visualize the inside, or lumen, of blood vessels and organs of the body, with particular interest in the arteries, veins, and the heart chambers.”
“His heart stopped beating, then he was resuscitated in parliament and transferred within 20 minutes to hospital” where medical machinery kept him alive, Koca had said on Tuesday.
In the May presidential elections, the tiny Islamist Saadet Party joined the major opposition group in support of candidate Kemal Kilicdaroglu.
Due to the alliance’s agreement, Saadet MPs, like Bitmez, were allotted seats in Parliament simply because they were included on the lists of the largest opposition party, the CHP.
Bitmez, who was a devout Muslim and consistent critic of Israel, is now being mocked online by a number of popular social media accounts, even though his sudden death has been reported and televised.
“Poetic justice and instant karma…” One social media user said.
“I guess ‘Allah’ didn’t give two sh*ts about him, best of luck to your fake god in bringing wrath to Israel lol,” another user said.
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