BDP lends conditional support to government’s constitutional reforms

The package is also expected to include other changes such as the establishment of the ombudsman system, introducing positive discrimination for women, making political party closures more difficult and narrowing the sphere of the military judiciary.

Lowering the 10 percent election threshold is also being debated. The proposed changes include the introduction of an additional election system that considers Turkey a single constituency and makes sure that even if political parties are unable to pass the threshold they will be represented in Parliament. This system will be called the Deputies of Turkey.

The two main opposition groups, the Republican People’s Party (CHP) and the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), have long declared their objection to the constitutional changes and claimed that the government is not eligible to carry out such amendments. At least 367 votes are required to approve a constitutional amendment. Any constitutional change supported by more than 330 and less than 366 deputies can be taken to a referendum. The AK Party has 337 deputies, but the parliament speaker can’t cast a vote. Under these circumstances the stance of the BDP, which has 20 deputies, will not block the possibility of a referendum but will be crucial.

Prerequisites necessary, according to BDP

According to BDP Siirt deputy Osman Özçelik, there are many essential conditions for the BDP, but for a small constitutional amendment package like this one, there are a few requirements the party can’t do without: lowering the election threshold, ensuring financial assistance from the Treasury for all political parties represented in Parliament and abolishing the obstacles to campaigning in languages other Turkish.

“For each of us, there are on average 30 investigations, and most of them are because of using Kurdish in political campaigns. Actually, the constitutional obstacles to using Kurdish have been removed in the past, but the amendments in the Political Parties Law have not been made,” Özçelik told Sunday’s Zaman.

Using Kurdish in political campaigns and financial assistance issues do not require constitutional amendments and can be solved by legal regulations. The government is discussing the removal of obstacles to campaigning in Kurdish. But so far the government has not given any signal that it intends to change regulations on the financial assistance given to political parties through the Treasury. Only parties exceeding a 7 percent threshold in national elections will get financial assistance from the state.

In 2006, during the first term of the AK Party, some legal amendments were made which regulated the assistance political parties could get from the Treasury, meaning that only political parties that exceeded the election threshold were allowed given funding. Before this regulation, political parties that formed parliamentary groups were also entitled to benefit from the Treasury’s assistance. “The Treasury means the taxes of the citizens, and our voters also pay taxes; it is our natural right to benefit from this assistance,” Özçelik said.

The deputies of the BDP, due to the election threshold, had run as independent candidates in the 2007 general elections and formed a parliamentary group after they were elected. Their first party, the Democratic Society Party (DTP), was closed down by the Constitutional Court.

BDP’s support for judicial reform is not automatic

The government’s main motivation for constitutional amendments is reform of the judiciary and changes to the structure of the HSYK and the Constitutional Court. The court has shut down several pro-Kurdish parties, but that does not mean the BDP will unconditionally support the judicial reform envisaged by the government. BDP Chairman Selahattin Demirtaş, while addressing his parliamentary group last week, underlined that they strongly defend judicial reform but they are against any changes that would give the government the opportunity to interfere with the judiciary.

Demirtaş, a lawyer by profession, told BDP deputies that the AK Party wants to create an ideological judiciary. “For us, the efforts of the AK Party to seize control of the HSYK and the Constitutional Court are not right. We think a compromise committee should be formed in Parliament for constitutional amendments. Also, in our opinion, members of the HSYK should be elected by judges and prosecutors, not by government-controlled bodies,” he said.

Deputies of Turkey unacceptable for BDP

Another obstacle preventing the BDP from supporting the constitutional amendments is their categorical objection to the Deputies of Turkey system. “This is a real trap and a fraud. It is impossible for us to accept it. For example, in the past, in one of the elections we got 6.2 percent of the vote, and if there was no election threshold, we would have 54 deputies. Implementing the Deputies of Turkey system without lowering or removing the election threshold under the same conditions would only give us six deputies. This is cheating and is unacceptable,” Özçelik said.

Demirtaş underlined their opposition to the Deputies of Turkey system at the parliamentary group meeting, saying that even if the government put the right to education in the mother tongue and the Deputies of Turkey system into the same package, they would still oppose the constitutional amendments.

The Deputies of Turkey system has also been mentioned by terrorist Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) leader Abdullah Öcalan, who is serving a life sentence on İmralı island in the Sea of Marmara. He strongly opposed the system and underlined that lowering the election threshold is not sufficient to win support for the constitutional amendments. Öcalan, who has a strong influence on pro-Kurdish politics, set the release of Kurdish politicians who have been arrested during the security forces’ operations against the urban arm of the PKK and the abolishment of the Counterterrorism Law as additional conditions. He said that as long as the Counterterrorism Law remains in effect, Kurds should oppose the constitutional amendments.