By Hemin Assaf
Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) is engaged in eliminating barriers standing in the way of amending the country’s constitution. They are planning to hold a referendum on a proposed constitution which is hostile to the interests of the country’s Kurds. The Republican People's Party (CHP) has also prepared a draft constitution which has only one single point in favor of the Kurds.
Previous attempts to redraft Turkey’s constitution failed, leading to the removal of the country’s Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu from his position. Binali Yıldırım was then brought in as Prime Minister in a renewed attempt to realize President Erdoğan’s dream of having the constitution he wants.
The Turkish government is resorting to every conceivable mechanism to amend the country’s constitution in an attempt to change the governance system from a parliamentary system to a presidential system. The AKP initially formed a parliamentary committee to negotiate the constitutional amendments it wanted to make, knowing that the amendments were going to be opposed by the opposition (pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) and the CHP).
The AKP threw this topic to the parliament, knowing that it would be rejected by the opposition parties, to show the people that the parliament cannot settle this issue and that the people should therefore decide on it themselves.
It worked. The AKP has been promoting the necessity to make constitutional amendments at every rally they have held ever since they were rejected by the parliament.
In addition, the MHP internal problems forced Devlet Bahçeli to give in to the AKP demands to support constitutional amendments in return for being disentangled from his party’s problems. Bahçeli therefore endorsed constitutional amendments, among them, a presidential system of governance for Turkey. This way, Turkey enlisted MHP’s endorsement to bring about the changes it wants to make through constitutional amendments.
Then the AKP’s crackdown on the HDP officials started under the pretext of their alleged support to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) which engages in incursions across the country’s Kurdish towns from time to time.
The AKP also removed, under the same pretext, the HDP MPs from the parliamentary committee formed to negotiate constitutional amendments. Its crackdown on the HDP intensified even further, leading to the imprisonment of HDP leaders and MPs recently.
The AKP exploited the July 15 military coup to intensify its crackdown on parties opposing constitutional amendments. They imprisoned, tried and sacked journalists, academics and civil society activists opposing constitutional amendments.
The AKP had initially taken the Gülen Movement for granted, an Islamic organization led by the exiled Turkish dissident Fethullah Gülen. But they later realized how precarious this movement was on the political aspirations of the AKP. They therefore mounted on an offensive to discredit and arrest its members, accusing them of the July 15 failed coup. They also got the parliament to pass legislation blacklisting the Gülen Movement as a terrorist organization.
The CHP remains one of the tricky obstacles standing in the way of Erdoğan’s dream of changing the country’s constitution in favor of the ruling AKP. The AKP has therefore intensified efforts to confront the CHP too, accusing its officials of either defending the Gülen Movement or the PKK.
Referendum on constitutional amendments
Erdoğan knows that he is unlikely to secure enough votes in the parliament in order to pass a bill legislating constitutional amendments which would need 367 votes out of the total 550.
The AKP has 316 MPs, and MHP has 39, with both totaling 355 in which case the AKP would still be 12 votes short of the 367 votes needed to pass a favorable legislation, providing that all the MHP’s 39 votes are secured.
The CHP and HDP MPs have already rejected constitutional amendments. The AKP is, therefore, highly unlikely to secure these 12 votes. In addition, the AKP has not yet secured the votes of all the 39 MHP MPs.
Erdoğan is therefore looking to find a loophole to justify holding a referendum on amending the country’s constitution, shifting the burden of responsibility for making these amendments from himself to the nation. He can amend the constitution the way he wants and change the country’s parliamentary system into presidential if he can secure over 50 percent of the votes in the referendum.
CHP’s draft constitution
The CHP has also prepared a draft constitution which they will reportedly be submitting to the parliament to debate it. The parliament should first debate these two draft constitutions and then a referendum should be held on them – a lengthy process which will be delaying the realization of Erdoğan’s dream.
The Kurdish question vs. constitutional amendments
The AKP and CHP’s draft constitutions are unclear on the Kurdish question in Turkey. The AKP’s primary motive for amending the constitution is to change the country’s current parliamentary system to presidential where the president has absolute power and their only candidate for this position is Erdoğan himself. In addition to this, they want to reinstate capital punishment, reduce parliament’s power, and increase its seats to 600.
The CHP’s draft constitution is, however, a bit better for the Kurds in that it promises a reduction of the electoral threshold from 10 to 3 percent (minimum votes a political party is supposed to win in order to secure any representation in the parliament). Moreover, it guarantees the HDP representation in the parliament, and paves the way to other Kurdish political parties to have representatives there. This will increase the number of MPs representing the country’s Kurds.
However, the question of Kurdish language remains unclear, i.e. whether education will be allowed in people’s native language and whether Kurdish will be allowed to be used to engage in politics.
Current political wrangling among Turkey’s parties has brought the Kurdish question and the prospect of having a permanent ceasefire in the country to a complete halt.
