On Saturday, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan was exposed to an embarrassing situation in his hometown Rize when citizens refused his gifts of tea packages.
According to the Turkish news site “Cert TV”, which was followed by “Al-Ain News”, Erdogan was giving a speech in a covered hall in the city of “Rize”, during the expanded regional consultative meeting of the Justice and Development Party he proceeded to something that sparked a wide range mockery from the Turkish people.
He offered the attendees of the citizens to give tea packets, saying, “Well, what do you think if I give you packets of tea?”, so that the audience replied, “We don’t want.” The sudden response put Erdogan in an unenviable position, to the point that he found himself unable to respond, according to what appeared in a video recording of the situation.
Last July, Erdogan sparked a wave of mockery after distributing tea packages to the flood victims in the same city. According to media reports, Erdogan went, at the time, to the city that was hit by floods, which resulted in casualties, on a visit that was not to learn about the repercussions of those floods but to attend a popular conference for his party.
Erdogan distributed packages of tea to those affected by the floods, instead of finding solutions and alternatives to compensate them for the material and human losses they suffered, which angered the people.
Turkish opposition reacted with Veli Agbaba, Vice President of the Republican People’s Party stating:
“Erdogan classics! Throwing tea on the heads of citizens whose homes were destroyed by floods in Rize. These shameful scenes are happening in Turkey because of the Justice and Development Party,” Agbaba said in a tweet on his official account on Twitter.
