A senior official from the AK Party told Sunday’s Zaman on condition of anonymity that the parliamentary Consti-tutional Reconciliation Commission may become the venue of intra-party discussions for the settlement of the decades-old terrorism problem.
He said this would have to happen through dialogue with the terrorist Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) aside from the commission’s efforts to write a new constitution.
In other words, the AK Party may seek to reconcile with the two staunch opponents of the settlement process -- the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) and the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) -- during debates on the new constitution at the Constitutional Reconciliation Commission.
Earlier this month, a commission was set up in Parliament to deal with the ongoing settlement process, seeking to solve the decades-old Kurdish and terrorism problems. The CHP and the MHP recently announced that they would not send deputies to the commission. If the CHP and the MHP do not send deputies, the commission will start working with members from the AK Party and the Peace and Democracy Party (BDP).
At the end of last year, the AK Party government launched negotiations with the PKK’s jailed leader, Abdullah Öcalan, who is incarcerated on İmralı Island in the Marmara Sea. In the past few months, Öcalan, who, despite his 14 years in prison, still wields enormous clout over PKK terrorists as well as millions of nationalist Kurds in Turkey, called on PKK terrorists to lay down their weapons and leave Turkey.
In response to Öcalan’s call, a senior commander of the terrorist group announced in late April that it would begin withdrawing its terrorists from Turkey on May 8.
The PKK, listed as a terrorist organization by Turkey, the EU and the US, has been waging a bloody campaign in Turkey’s Southeast since 1984. More than 40,000 people have been killed in the conflict so far. Over the past several years, Turkey has taken significant steps to expand the cultural and political rights of Kurds, who have suffered from the Turkish state’s harsh policies of discrimination against them over the past decades.
The CHP supported the settlement process at the outset but has since withdrawn its support, accusing the government of failing to be transparent. The MHP, on the other hand, has opposed the process from the very beginning and has described it as an “act of betrayal.” According to the party, the government should not enter into negotiations with a terrorist group that is responsible for the deaths of thousands of soldiers and civilians in the country.
The Constitutional Reconciliation Commission, which has failed to agree on a majority of articles to be included in the new constitution since its establishment more than a year ago, is likely to face even more difficulties if it undertakes the mission to make the four political parties in Parliament agree on the settlement process. If the commission spends the time it has been given to conclude drafting the new constitution on settling the terrorism and Kurdish issues, then it will need more time to conclude the drafting.
The commission was scheduled to complete its task by Dec. 31, 2012, but failed to keep to that schedule. It was then granted three additional months to produce the draft. That deadline expired on March 31. When the commission failed to conclude its work by the extended deadline, the AK Party said another month would be given to the commission. That deadline expired on April 30. The commission is now engaged in talks to extend its calendar for a third time.
The AK Party says the commission should speedily complete the draft, while the opposition parties do not support the idea that a limited amount of time be given to the commission and rather believe the commission should work freely until it produces a draft.
The commission has so far discussed 150 articles to be included in the new constitution, but members of the commission have only agreed on 28 of them. Members have stark differences on the remaining 122 articles.
Last week, Deputy Prime Minister Bekir Bozdağ complained about the failure of members of the commission to agree on articles of the new constitution, which he said may drive the future work of the commission into difficulty. “Elections will be held next year and the year after that,” he said, implying that it will be harder for the commission to conclude the drafting as elections draw closer. Turkey will hold local elections in March 2014, and then will follow the presidential election in August 2015.
Sources also say the AK Party made it difficult to draft the new constitution by allowing all four political parties in Parliament to have an equal number of members in the Constitutional Reconciliation Commission. In most cases, parliamentary commissions have deputies from the political parties according to the number of seats they hold in Parliament. In the settlement commission, the AK Party has 11 members while the other three parties have fewer members. In the constitution commission, however, all four parties have three members each.
According to some political analysts, the AK Party could have completed the drafting of the new constitution if it had had the majority of seats in the commission. The equality of members in the commission makes it harder for the commission to agree on articles to be included in the new constitution, analysts argue.
