Turkey's constitution commission keeps working
Although the Turkish Constitution Reconciliation Commission has stalled in writing a new constitution, no political parties are eager to announce its end.
It’s not over until it’s officially pronounced over — and that is the job of the Turkish parliament’s Constitution Reconciliation Commission (CRC). Despite the acknowledgement of a need for a new constitution, all four political parties in parliament and equally represented in this commission have been unable to reach consensus over key issues.
Reacting to this stalled process, Cemil Cicek, speaker of the parliament and CRC chairman, expressed his desire on Nov. 18 to resign, reasoning that he's in disbelief over the commission’s capability to finalize its mission. However, according to the established rules of the commission, Cicek does not have the authority to terminate the CRC’s work. Only the four involved political parties — Justice and Development Party (AKP), Republican People’s Party (CHP), Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) and the pro-Kurdish Peace and Democracy Party (BDP) — can decide on such an ending.
At their Tuesday regular group meeting in parliament, none of the party leaders — certainly including the ruling AKP — announced their withdrawal from the commission. There is still room to push this commission to continue its work, making this momentary downturn just a tactic to force the opposition parties to make concessions. Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan was the harshest critic of the commission’s work.
“We won’t be the unconstructive ... When we expressed that civilians could also write a constitution, the opposition walked in the opposite direction,” Erdogan said addressing his group in parliament on Nov. 26. “While this work was supposed to be finalized in 12 months, it’s so far been 25 months ... It was wrong to expect those parties that favored military coups to help write a civilian constitution. These parties that are for the status quo blocked this process. They now say they won’t walk away from the table. What did you do at the table? What does it matter whether you remain at the table or not?”
