CHP non-committal on boycott amid row over disqualified deputies

"The CHP will stick to its determined stance until all those who were elected as deputies…come to Parliament and take their oath," the CHP leader told reporters in Ayaş, Ankara province, where he attended a local festival. "We are waiting for Tuesday with good intentions. All the 550 deputies have to be there," he added.

Parliament is due to convene on Tuesday for the oath-taking ceremony after courts in İstanbul and Diyarbakır rejected requests for the release from jail of nine elected candidates, effectively barring them from taking their seats in Parliament. Most of the disqualified candidates are from a Kurdish bloc, which won 36 seats in the June 12 elections. Six of them, all jailed suspects in a case investigating the outlawed Kurdish Communities Union (KCK), however, have been barred by the court overseeing the trial from Parliament. Members of the Kurdish bloc are backed by the Peace and Democracy Party (BDP) but ran as independent candidates in the June 12 elections out of fear that the BDP will not get enough votes to pass the 10 percent election threshold.

Courts separately refused to release two elected candidates from the main opposition Republican People's Party (CHP) and one from the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) who face charges in connection with two subversive plot cases, Ergenekon and Sledgehammer.

“We want democracy and freedom. We will pass the first test for them on Tuesday,” Kılıçdaroğlu said earlier in the day as he addressed the festival in Ayaş.

Political observers say the CHP is expected to attend Tuesday's oath-taking ceremony but party officials have so far declined to offer clear public remarks on whether the party will attend the ceremony or boycott it, like the BDP. The BDP has earlier announced that it would boycott Parliament unless all elected candidates are allowed to enter Parliament.

Earlier in the day, MHP leader Devlet Bahçeli said his party will not boycott Parliament even though he harshly criticized the court decisions against the MHP's elected candidate and others.

“We believe the crisis can be overcome not by the judiciary that is guided [by outside forces] or through a boycott [of Parliament] but that it can be resolved within Parliament,” Bahçeli said in a written statement.

“It is a scandal that Engin Alan [a jailed Sledgehammer suspect who was elected as a deputy from the MHP] and others who have been elected as deputies are still imprisoned despite their requests for release,” Bahçeli said in a written statement, adding that this situation, which he said “stains democracy,” should be corrected by a higher court. The MHP leader claimed the court decisions indicated that the judiciary is “biased and politicized.”

He said, however, that all MHP deputies will attend the oath-taking ceremony and that the party will “give its support for the functioning of democracy” because it respects “Parliament and the national will.”

President calls on political parties not to boycott Parliament

The opposition leaders' remarks came after President Abdullah Gül called on all political parties to seek a solution within Parliament.

In a statement released on Saturday, Gül appeared to criticize the court decisions to disqualify politicians elected as deputies, saying, “It is a fact that legal provisions could sometimes cease to be able to respond to [society's] needs and produce results that do not correspond to the public conscience.”

“Decisions that have as of late been made by judicial bodies and debates that stem from these decisions show that there is need for more substantial reforms in order for our legal system and democracy to reach universal standards,” he said.

Gül, however, dismissed a boycott as a solution and said the problems that Turkey faces today could be an opportunity to accelerate a planned overhaul of the Constitution.

“The venue to resolve all these problems is Parliament,” Gül said. “Therefore, I call on all political parties that were given the right to be represented in Parliament to work inside this legitimate and democratic institution, not outside of it, for a solution,” added the president.

The government has pledged to draft a new constitution which is hoped to further extend individual and political freedoms. On Saturday, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan called for a joint effort to write a brand new constitution and invited all parties to put aside their biases and start working on a new constitution with a sprit of compromise. Likening the current Constitution, drafted during military rule in 1982, to an old car, Erdoğan said: “What we are saying is that we need to abandon this car that is dented everywhere and has a sputtering engine. … We should continue on our way with a brand new, zero-mileage car.”