BDP deputy says new constitution on ice, PM didn’t keep his promise
20 September 2013 / AHMET ŞİNOFOROĞLU, ANKARA – Zaman – Pro-Kurdish Peace and Democracy Party (BDP) Diyarbakır deputy Altan Tan has said that the drafting of a new Turkish constitution has been effectively shelved.
“Where we stand now is that the Republican People’s Party (CHP) and the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) did not move even an inch from their secular, Kemalist, national-statehood-based mindset and that if they could, they would introduce the 1982 constitution with 2013 written on its cover page. And if they deny what I just said there are recordings and official reports. The Justice and Development Party (AK Party), however, is holding off its more than 50 deputies who share the views of the MHP and that’s why the party tends to put drafting the constitution off until after the general elections,” Tan said at a meeting held in the party’s headquarters in Ankara on Thursday.
Recalling that all of Turkey’s parties made a public pledge to prepare the new constitution, Tan said that Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan was the first to make the promise.
“The prime minister has said many times that if there is no agreement we will bring our constitution package to Parliament. However, this idea is a dead letter, and on the other hand there is an obvious feeling of aversion to drafting a new draft constitution,” Tan said. “The new constitution has been put on the shelf.”
Tan said the draft constitution – which, he added, Erdoğan said would be more democratic — should go to Parliament. The BDP, he continued, has been vowing since the beginning to support the democratic constitution. “And we see that there are some CHP deputies in Parliament who will vote for the new constitution. At any rate, it will exceed the number of 330 [votes] required to go to referendum,” Tan said, adding that the prime minister did not keep his promise. A new constitution needs the approval of two-thirds of Parliament, 367 deputies, to be ratified, and 330 deputies to be taken to a referendum. The AK Party has 327 deputies, which means it needs to cooperate with another political party to take its draft to a referendum. The CHP and MHP have already expressed their unwillingness to cooperate with the AK Party. That leaves the AK Party with the Peace and Democracy Party (BDP), which has 30 deputies. However, the AK Party is reluctant to cooperate with the BDP on the new constitution.