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BDP boycott on reform vote leads to controversy
Gülten Kışanak, the co-chairperson of the BDP, claimed while addressing her parliamentary group on Tuesday that with the constitutional reform package the public is being forced to either defend the status quo or to accept the amendments that do not respond to the democratic needs of the public. She also claimed that their constituents agree with them.
“There are efforts to mislead the public. There are claims that the voter base of the BDP is saying ‘yes’ to the constitutional amendments. These claims are trying to cheat our people, but our constituents are very well aware of what they need,” she said.
On the other hand, observers argue that the electorate in pro-Kurdish areas will have a tendency to say “yes” to the constitutional amendments when asked in a referendum. However, experts have underlined that if there is a call for a boycott from the terrorist Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), then the grass roots might obey. At the beginning, the BDP gave conditional support to the constitutional amendments but then changed its position, especially after Abdullah Öcalan, the leader of the PKK, who is serving a life sentence on İmralı Island in the Marmara Sea, told his lawyers several times that the constitutional reform package is full of inconsistencies. He also urged the BDP to form a strong front against the constitutional amendments if the conditions raised by the BDP were not met.
In the same speech, Kışanak mentioned the children in conflict with the law who are facing long prison sentences and the more than 1,000 BDP members, including some mayors, who are currently under arrest. She said the government claims to be making these constitutional amendments for the sake of democracy but that it is impossible to believe in the sincerity of the government while these groups are still under arrest. Kışanak also said that the judiciary is under the control of the deep state now but that after the constitutional amendments are passed, it will be under the control of the government.
“The constitutional reform package is forcing the public to choose either the military coup constitution or the constitution of the AK Party, which is not doing anything for the various groups in society and the working class. We are not obliged to accept this. We will follow a third path,” she said.
Bengi Yıldız, the parliamentary group chairman of the BDP, explained their reasoning and said the package disregarded the demands of the working class and that this was why they would not be a party to it. “We will show the color of our vote by boycotting it. We will not say ‘no,’ but neither will we say ‘yes.’ We will follow a third path,” he said.
He added that from the beginning their door had been open to the government to discuss their suggestions, but their views had not been taken into consideration in Parliament’s Constitution Commission. “The package submitted to Parliament is the package of the [ruling Justice and Development Party] AK Party. We will not be dragged behind any party,” he said. At the beginning of the constitutional reform package discussions, the BDP declared that they were not against it but that some steps towards democratization needed to be taken first. The demands outlined by the BDP for the most part don’t require constitutional amendments but rather changes to existing laws, such as lowering the 10 percent election threshold, new regulations that will enable political parties to benefit from financial assistance from the Treasury on more equal terms and also some amendments to the Anti-terror Law and the Turkish Penal Code (TCK). The BDP had also demanded amendments in the law so that political campaigning in Kurdish would be allowed.
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