The National Solidarity, Brotherhood and Democracy Committee of Parliament, established for the terror-free Türkiye initiative, will meet twice more this week, Parliament announced last week.
The sixth meeting of the committee will take place on Wednesday, while the seventh meeting will be held on Thursday. Parliament Speaker Numan Kurtulmuş will lead the meeting in the capital, Ankara.
In this meeting, the opinions, suggestions and evaluations of the previous term's Parliament Speakers Hikmet Çetin, Ömer Izgi, Bülent Arınç, Köksal Toptan, Mehmet Ali Şahin, Cemil Çiçek, Ismet Yılmaz, Ismail Kahraman, Binali Yıldırım and Mustafa Şentop will be discussed.
Moreover, the Union of Turkish Bar Associations (TBB) will address the meeting on Thursday.
Following the committee’s fifth meeting, Kurtulmuş said that the pains suffered over the last 40 years were the pains of the entire country and that politics and democracy must now work together to prevent similar ones.
The speaker emphasized that presenting statements that were never discussed in the commission, that were not even brought up during the procedures before the commission was established, that were not shared by the commission members at any point during the meetings and that were spoken in secret sessions was, to say the least, a clear act of provocation. Kurtulmuş stated that the 51 members of the commission share a united resolve against any efforts that could disrupt the commission's work.
The terror-free Türkiye initiative, launched by government ally Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) leader Devlet Bahçeli, made its first tangible progress in February when Abdullah Öcalan accepted Bahçeli’s call and urged the group to lay down its weapons. In May, the PKK announced it would dissolve itself. Last month, some 30 PKK members, including a senior leader, burned their weapons in a ceremony in northern Iraq. Although symbolic, the gesture marked the first time that the group had laid down arms in its campaign of violence for more than four decades.
Earlier this month, the initiative proceeded to its next step with the establishment of the parliamentary committee.
Comprising lawmakers from most parties represented in Parliament, the committee will assess how the initiative will proceed, particularly in terms of laws and regulations regarding the status of the PKK and its members. This may include lenient sentences for members who surrender to the group.
Although Parliament is in summer recess, the committee will continue to work without interruption. The committee will not directly propose bills but will likely refer its reports to other subcommittees of Parliament, which will then discuss and vote on bills for their referral to the Parliament's General Assembly. The General Assembly is the ultimate authority in Parliament to pass laws. Throughout its tenure, the committee will also hear statements of stakeholders involved or affected by the initiative, from the National Intelligence Organization (MIT), which monitors the PKK's disarmament, to families of terror victims. The committee is expected to recommend amendments to counterterrorism laws and the Turkish Penal Code to accommodate the needs of the initiative, especially in terms of the situation of people convicted of terrorism or aiding and abetting the PKK.
Meanwhile, the Peoples' Equality and Democracy Party (DEM Party) Group Deputy Chair Sezai Temelli on Monday said at Parliament that: “It's important for delegations to be heard and participate in the societal commission. In fact, the commission should also receive proposals to reach various stakeholders. However, this isn't the commission's primary responsibility. This could have been accomplished by establishing subcommittees or a separate commission. The commission's primary responsibility is to archive drafts of legal regulations for immediate implementation, should the need arise.”
Temelli also said that the demand to speak Kurdish in the commission should be met.
Temelli said that a DEM Party delegation might visit Imralı island, where Öcalan is imprisoned, this week, but that the exact day had not been set yet.
“Our delegation has not been able to go for almost a month. The developments that took place within this month will be conveyed, while his evaluations will be taken.”
