[CROSS READER] Lack of constructive opposition once again shows its face

Yeni Şafak’s Fehmi Koru recalls a meeting Interior Minister Beşir Atalay held with some journalists, including himself, to discuss their views on the Kurdish issue. Noting that Atalay then said they would resolve the issue in Parliament, he says he was the only person who told Atalay not to trust Parliament so much. “I said that since I believed that the understanding of ‘opposition’ and ‘government’ in Turkey is not suited toward the resolution of problematic issues regardless of how sensitive the issue is. I wish I had turned out to be in the wrong. I wish opposition parties had acted to show what constructive opposition is. Democracy in Turkey is perceived as cockfighting between the government and the opposition,” he says.

Erhan Başyurt from the Bugün daily thinks that the CHP, whose leader, Deniz Baykal, had previously abstained from discussing the issue with the prime minister at his party headquarters, insisting on having the meeting recorded, totally closed its doors to compromise during Friday’s session. “Although AK Party deputies listened to him [Baykal] while he was speaking, Baykal and his party walked out of Parliament during Erdoğan’s address, which shows that their camera condition was just an excuse to not to meet with the prime minister,” he says.