The General Assembly of the Turkish Parliament will resume its weekly session with a busy agenda. On one hand, it will launch an investigation into the killing of the children and on April 23, it will mark its 106th anniversary, an occasion which is also marked as Children’s Day, a festive holiday.
Parliament will start the week with a special session on children. The assembly's speaker and the staff members will hand over their seats to children in a symbolic act while on Thursday. Parliament will convene a special session on its anniversary with the participation of the speaker and representatives of political parties. Separately, a reception will be held on the occasion.
On Tuesday, the assembly will hold a discussion on the school shootings in the provinces of Şanlıurfa and Kahramanmaraş. Perpetrators in both cases were teenagers and children, sparking a debate about the security of schools and the state of moral mindset of children. Separately, lawmakers will continue a debate on new bills introducing restrictions on social media for children and on the extension of maternity leaves. Also this week, a parliamentary committee will discuss the impact of a law implemented in 2024 to address the problem of stray dogs attacking people.
The Turkish Grand National Assembly (TBMM) met for the first time in Ankara on April 23, 1920, during the War of Independence to lay the foundations for an independent, secular and modern republic.
Parliament is the brainchild of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the founder of the Republic of Türkiye who led the epic War of Independence that secured the country’s survival after a period of occupation by Allied forces in the aftermath of World War I.
Atatürk, then known only as Mustafa Kemal, a high-ranking Ottoman officer, launched the campaign of independence on May 19, 1919, when he landed in Samsun, a northern Turkish province that would be his first stopover in a tour of Anatolia to mobilize the disillusioned public against occupiers. Through conventions in Amasya, Erzurum and Sivas, Atatürk paved the way for a new future for Türkiye where “sovereignty of the nation could only be secured by the nation itself.” The Ottoman Empire, in its death throes, had its own Parliament when Atatürk left for Samsun but the occupation of Istanbul, the capital of the empire, rendered the Parliament dysfunctional. Soon, members of this Ottoman Parliament started departing for Ankara, the future capital of Republic of Türkiye, and joined Atatürk’s movement for independence. In March 1920, Atatürk declared the impending convention of a Parliament with emergency authority. On April 22, 1920, Atatürk announced the new Parliament that will be the “highest authority over nation, all civilian and military authorities.” One day later, Parliament was opened in its first building, formerly a club of the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP), of which Atatürk was once a member.
