DTP closure might lead to interim elections

The possible closure of the party will also spell irrevocable damage to the government's Kurdish initiative, which seeks to alleviate terror by extending the rights of the country's Kurds.

Supreme Court of Appeals Chief Prosecutor Abdurrahman Yalçınkaya in 2007 filed charges against the DTP and demanded the permanent closure of the party. He claimed that the DTP members' actions and statements run counter to the integrity of the state and nation and that the party has become a focal point of these acts.

The indictment against the DTP calls for 221 members, including eight of its deputies -- Ahmet Türk, Aysel Tuğluk, Sebahat Tuncel, Osman Özçelik, İbrahim Binici, Sevahir Bayındır, Fatma Kurtulan and Emine Ayna -- to be banned from membership in a political party for five years. It also asks that the DTP be prevented from participating in elections until the case is finalized, that all DTP members, administrators, deputies and mayors are banned from running in elections as independents or representing another party and that new members are not permitted to join the DTP. However, the Constitutional Court refused to implement those measures in a decision in December 2007, and the DTP was able to run in the local elections in March 2009, in which it won 99 municipalities.

The Constitutional Court in July 2008 was able to reach a verdict on the closure case against the ruling Justice and Development Party (AK Party), which was indicted six months before the DTP, but the AK Party did not request any additional time for its defense.

Haşim Kılıç, the president of the Constitutional Court, said several times in public statements that if Parliament acted and made several changes to the Constitution and Turkey's laws regulating political parties, closures could be avoided. There were discussions and weak attempts to change the Constitution and the Law on Political Parties to make party closures difficult, but they were not realized.

The Constitution requires that at least seven of the 11 members of the Constitutional Court vote for closure before a party can be disbanded.

Some members will be in prison

If the Constitutional Court decides to close the DTP -- and according to many experts, it will -- DTP deputies who will be held responsible for “leading to the closure of the party by their actions and discourse” will be banned from politics for five years. They will also lose their membership in Parliament.

DTP deputies who will not be held responsible for the closure of the party will be able to remain in Parliament as independent deputies and will also be allowed to join any other party.

In order to form a parliamentary group, there should be at least 20 deputies. But if the DTP is shut down, it will be very difficult for them to form a parliamentary group again unless they convince other deputies to join them.

If DTP İstanbul deputy Tuncel is held responsible for the closure of the party, she will be sent back to prison. When she was elected as a deputy, she was under arrest and a court case was pending, but following her election, she acquired immunity and her case was frozen.

Court cases involving other deputies who are facing the possibility of losing their immunity will resume from the point where they left off.

Interim elections might be held

The DTP last week announced that if it is closed down and if some of its deputies are kicked out of Parliament, the remaining DTP deputies will all resign from Parliament. “Our friends believe that there is no meaning in remaining inside a parliament that runs on bans,” Türk said last week after it become clear that the Constitutional Court will start to hear the DTP case.

If all the DTP deputies resign and if these resignations are accepted by Parliament (half of all deputies must say “yes” to make resignations valid), then the number of empty chairs in Parliament will rise to 27. According to the Constitution, if the number of empty chairs reaches 28, interim elections should be held.

Ufuk Uras, an independent İstanbul deputy and the former chairman of the Freedom and Solidarity Party (ÖDP), might also resign in order to support the DTP deputies. This means interim elections will be inevitable.

When it comes to mayors from the DTP, they may be able to continue their job as independents or they might joint other parties. But all this depends on if they are banned from politics. If a DTP mayor is banned from politics, s/he can keep his or her post as mayor, but must run as an independent for five years.

That said, there are many individual court cases against the many DTP mayors, including court cases for using any language other than Turkish in their political campaigns. There are many court cases against the mayors for promoting the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) terrorist organization. Many of these court cases have been concluded in lower courts and are now in front of the Supreme Court of Appeals. If the Constitutional Court decides to close the party, the Supreme Court of Appeals is expected to not be lenient on the mayors.

The Law on Political Parties does not allow the establishment of a new party that is a continuation of a party that has been closed down. However, a new party was established last year, the Democracy and Peace Party (DPT), by people who have close ties to the DTP.