Parliament will be working at full steam until the end of July for the Justice and Development Party (AK Party) and the Nationalist Movement Party's (MHP) priority to change parliamentary bylaws.
Having completed the events to commemorate the victory over last year's July 15 coup attempt, Parliament will now get down to work as the AK Party and the MHP place emphasis on changing parliamentary bylaws by the end of July before lawmakers go on holiday.
Parliament will reportedly work on Fridays, Saturdays, Sundays and Mondays in addition to the regular workdays of Tuesday through Thursday.
Parliament approved separate motions at the beginning of the week. First, the state of emergency was again extended for another three months, and the service time of the Turkish military as part of the U.N. Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) and the MINUSMA missions in Mali and the Central African Republic was extended to Dec. 31, 2018.
The parties are now expected to spend a great deal of time on changing parliamentary bylaws. The Constitutional Committee launched discussions regarding 17 adjustments to new bylaws after a consensus was reached between the AK Party and the MHP. The 17-article resolution was submitted to Parliament earlier in July.
The adjustments include new restrictions on party proposals brought to Parliament, stipulating that only the author of the proposal will be allowed to address the chamber on behalf of the group.
In recent practice, the spokespersons of political parties were allowed to speak for 10 minutes. Now, under the proposed adjustments to bylaws, any chairperson who conducts a meeting in the chamber will be allowed to allocate 15 deputies one minute of speaking each. The proposed regulation, if passed, will be adopted as a code provision.
The Republican People's Party (CHP) and the Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) are to oppose the new bylaws. The CHP and the HDP argue that the AK Party wants to further bolster its influence in Parliament and oppress the opposition with the proposed changes to the bylaws.
So far, there have been many attempts to reshape parliamentary bylaws. The current bylaws were approved on March 5, 1973, and took effect on Sept. 1, 1973. However, the parties have made efforts to change them more than 150 times since.
