The parliament descended into a violent argument over the hotly-debated new Turkish security bill between deputies of the AK Party and the opposition parties Republican People's Party CHP and the pro-Kurdish Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP).
HDP deputy Ertuğrul Kürkçü and CHP deputies Aykut Erdoğdu, Musa Çam, Refik Eryılmaz, and Mahmut Tanal were injured.
AK Party's group deputy chairman Mustafa Elitaş, who was delivering a speech in the lectern when the fighting broke out, accused HDP deputies Sabahat Tuncel and Pervin Buldan of harassing him and not letting him talk.
Elitaş gave a press conference on Wednesday, in which he said the two opposition parties CHP and MHP followed HDP like "train wagons", blocking the parliament's agenda. According to Elitaş, the HDP deputies physically attacked him, even using a chair, and he accused the HDP "invading" the lectern. The parliament thereby descended quickly into a chaos with the intervention of the AK Party deputies to protest on behalf of Elitaş.
Meanwhile, HDP deputies accused the AK Party deputies of causing the violence that broke out. The HDP deputy Ertuğrul Kürkçü said, "Our deputy chairman Pervin Buldan and deputy Sebahat Tuncel stood in front of the lectern, upon which men of AK Party attacked the lectern." He added that when the AK Party deputies jostled Buldan and Tuncel around, the HDP deputies intervened, as a result of which a "brawl" started.
Erkükçü suffered a head wound and a photo showed him with a dressing on his head. He claimed that AK Party deputies hit HDP deputy Erdoğdu's breast with the assembly's hammer, hit another HDP deputy's head with the assembly's bell.
The debate on the security package was paused following the incident, and is expected to resume on Wednesday. The package has drawn intense reactions from opposition parties, especially HDP. The bill issue comes after serious rioting in Turkey over the last six months. Protests over the Syrian Kurdish town of Kobani, which erupted in violence in October 2014 between pro- and anti-PKK Kurdish groups, in some of Turkey's southeastern provinces resulted in 40 deaths.
