Deputy Parliament Speaker Bekir Bozdağ, a former justice minister, called on Türkiye to get rid of the “shame of being governed by a coup constitution in the second centenary of the republic.
Bozdağ was speaking at an event on the Constitution at Bozok University in the central province of Yozgat on Monday. “A new constitution means a new Türkiye,” he said.
He said a new constitution should be the “absolute” agenda of Türkiye and pointed out that everyone, every segment of society were unanimous for the need of a new constitution, though efforts to draft it failed so far.
The government has been pushing to overhaul the Constitution for over a decade now, which was adopted in 1982 following a military coup that led to the detention of hundreds of thousands of people along with mass trials, torture and executions, which still represents a dark period in Turkish political history.
President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and ruling Justice and Development Party (AK Party) officials have repeatedly called for a new civilian constitution to replace it, describing the current one as "outdated.” The AK Party has included a declaration on a new constitution in its 2023 election campaign. The “New Constitution for the New Century of Türkiye” declaration, which refers to the second century of the Republic of Türkiye, underlined the need for a new constitution.
“Establishing a constitutional order based on human dignity for the prevalence of developments in the field of rights and freedoms is necessary,” the 2023 declaration said. The declaration also said the constitution would preserve democratic gains acquired during the AK Party’s governance and would ensure a high-standard democracy, guarantees for freedoms and the supremacy of law.
Bozdağ said on Monday that although Parliament made radical changes and reforms to the 1982 Constitution, this did not remove the existence of the Constitution, and on the contrary, those changes only fueled the need for a wholly new constitution. He underlined that developments in Türkiye and the world, and political shifts, took this need to the next level. “History forces us to draft a new constitution,” he said. “The Constitution was not formed, even in a democratic environment where everyone felt free. We are supposed to draft a new constitution with the contributions of civic society, political parties, universities, everyone. This will be a unique process then,” he stressed. “The 1982 Constitution cannot carry us forward. A new constitution is key to a new Türkiye. We cannot lose time with fruitless debates on the Constitution,” he added.
