Parliament's Constitutional Committee finalized the draft of the mini-constitution legislative package late Tuesday where committee representatives from the ruling Justice and Development Party (AK Party) and the opposition People's Republican Party (CHP) and Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) are preparing a report listing articles that members agreed and disagreed on.
Once the report is completed – prior to Qurban Bayram (Feast of the Sacrifice) on Sept. 12 – it will be presented to party leaders for a final decision to be made. Following the three-and-a-half-hour-long meeting, MHP representative Mehmet Parsak reaffirmed that the work on the draft copy has been finalized, saying, "Today, we saw the articles that we agreed on, the ones we disagreed on and the ones that we are nearly ready to agree on."
Adding that a report with information on the meetings is being prepared, the MHP's Parsak said that the report will be presented to party chairmen who will decide whether or not to continue discussions, depending on the outcome. Prior to Tuesday's meeting, the committee listened to representatives' presentations from the Supreme Board of Judges and Prosecutors (HSYK), as HSYK members answered questions from Constitutional Committee members last week when they discussed changing the period in which parliamentary elections are held from the current four years to every five years. As the closure of the military court of appeals and military high administrative courts is reportedly another topic on the Constitutional Committee's agenda, decreasing the size of the National Security Council (MGK) and removing the gendarmerie forces from the MGK are being discussed.
