The opposition accused the government of practically “selling” a 176-square-kilometer parcel of land on the border with Syria to foreign companies and has already pledged to challenge the law at the Constitutional Court. According to the law, the Defense Ministry will first invite companies and institutions to submit bids for the work. If this is unsuccessful, the Finance Ministry will open a tender. If both options fail, a local or foreign company may be allowed to carry out the work in return for utilizing the land for agricultural purposes. Now that the controversial bill has become law, analysts say the ruling Justice and Development Party (AK Party) managed the legal process very poorly and that it is no longer possible for this law to be put into practice. “Whether it was from exhaustion or obligation resulting from widespread pressure, the AK Party government did not manage the legal process for the clearing of mines along the Syrian border well. Due to constant tactical mistakes, it put Parliament in a deadlock,” says Habertürk's Muharrem Sarıkaya, who thinks if the AK Party parliamentary group administration had not demanded additional time from Parliament on the day this bill was first being debated, this law would have been enacted a long time ago. He argues that the AK Party itself allowed the public to notice that even some of its deputies were not comfortable with the passage of this bill and had reservations about it, leaving Parliament deadlocked for three weeks over a six-article draft. “The only reason for this was the inclusion of the build-operate-transfer model in the draft. If this article had been taken out of the bill, it would have become a law easily,” he suggests. In Sarıkaya's view, even if the bill passed Parliament and became law, it has no chance of being put into practice because the main opposition Republican People's Party (CHP) has pledged to challenge it at the Constitutional Court, and it is hard to guess what kind of ruling the court will hand down.
Looking at the debates that emerged between the government and the opposition parties over the bill and the harsh discourse adopted by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan against the critics of the bill, Milliyet's Taha Akyol argues that this tension reflects the symptoms of a syndrome that emerges when parties come to power alone for a second time. “Exhaustion, anger, relaxation and formation of a defensive psychology among deputies” are among these symptoms, he argues. In his view, the AK Party will have difficulty in managing all such complicated issues in the future, which is not good for Turkey. Akyol says Erdoğan should stop seeing conspiracies and enmity in every attitude he doesn't like and that he should set a more effective example in acting rationally and in compliance with democratic ethics.
