Bitmez, who is married and has a child, was taken to the Bilkent City Hospital in Ankara where he underwent treatment in the intensive care unit while in a critical condition.
Koca said on Tuesday that an angiography revealed that the two main veins in his heart were completely blocked.
‘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.
But Koca revealed that Bitmez died today – two days after he suffered the heart attack.
A graduate of Cairo’s Al Azhar University, Bitmez was the chairman of the Centre for Islamic Union Research and had previously worked for Islamic non-governmental organisations, his parliament biography shows.
Shortly before he collapsed on Tuesday, Bitmez had been criticising President Tayyip Erdogan’s ruling AK Party (AKP) over Turkey’s ongoing trade with Israel despite the war in Gaza, and despite the government’s sharp rhetorical criticism of Israel’s military bombardment.
“You allow ships to go to Israel and you shamelessly call it trade… You are Israel’s accomplice,” Bitmez said in his speech after placing a banner on the podium reading: “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 lawmakers during debate over the foreign ministry’s 2024 budget.
After finishing the speech, Bitmez suddenly fell backward on the floor, with other MPs rushing from their seats to help. It has now been confirmed he died today after receiving treatment in hospital.
Bitmez was elected as the 28th Term Kocaeli Deputy in the elections of May 14, 2023.
He served for the opposition Felicity (Saadet) Party, which is an Islamist Turkish political party founded in 2001.
After the Islamist Virtue Party was banned in July 2001 for violating secularist principles of Turkey’s constitution, reformists founded the incumbent Justice and Development Party (AKP), a conservative party run by president Recep Tayip Erdoğan, while hardliners formed Saadet.
While Turkey has a 99.8 per cent Muslim population, the country is bound to a number of secular and progressive principles enshrined by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk in the early 20th century.
Turkey and Israel normalised ties only last year, but relations have soured since Hamas’ October 7 strike into southern Israel.
Erdoğan – who only narrowly won the May election – has looked to widen his conservative base with backing from the country’s religious fringe.
Since October, he has taken a strong position against Israel and both countries have recalled their ambassadors while remaining open to trade.
Prior to the war, Erdoğan had expressed political support for Hamas’ political wing, seeing it as a viable government in the Gaza Strip. The war has seen a shift in rhetoric.
At the end of October, the president accused Israel’s allies of creating a ‘crusade war atmosphere pitting Christians against Muslims’.
‘The main culprit behind the massacre unfolding in Gaza is the West,’ he said at a rally of several hundred thousand Palestinian supporters in Istanbul on October 28.
Turkey has also pledged humanitarian aid to Gaza, with harrowing accounts of food, water, fuel and medical supply shortages coming out of the beleaguered enclave.
‘A total of 51 containers of medical supplies, generators and 20 ambulances, with necessary permissions, were loaded onto a ship from Izmir’s Alsancak port and sent to Egypt,’ Turkish Health Minister Fahrettin Koca said on November 10.
‘As part of the aid, a fully equipped heavy-climate type field hospital with operating rooms and intensive-care units and inflatable type field hospitals were sent,’ he said.
More than 18,000 Palestinians have been killed in the conflict since October, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry.
Some 40 per cent of the 2.3million population are children, and more than half the total have already been displaced by Israeli forces warning of invasion.
The IDF instructed Gazans living in the north to move on or risk being caught in a military escalation as early as October 13 but many have been unable to move due to sickness, age or injury, unwilling to leave their homes or caught in accidental bombings or areas designated safe zones.
