The main opposition Republican People's Party (CHP) has confirmed it would participate in the parliamentary committee tasked with overseeing the dissolution of the PKK terrorist group under the terror-free Türkiye initiative.
The names of the 10 CHP lawmakers who will join the committee will be announced Thursday, Turkish media reported Wednesday.
“The CHP will stay in the committee if it’s making progress,” CHP Chair Özgür Özel said in an interview with a Turkish news outlet on Tuesday.
In May, the PKK, blacklisted as a terrorist group by Türkiye, the U.S., the U.K. and the EU, announced its dissolution and the end of its four-decade terror campaign that cost tens of thousands of lives in Türkiye, as well as in Iraq and Syria.
Most recently, in a ceremony across the border in Iraq earlier this month, PKK members destroyed their weapons as part of the process. Turkish intelligence monitors the process, while Parliament will form a committee to weigh next steps in the initiative, from the fate of disarmed PKK members to their sentencing.
The committee will comprise 51 parliamentarians. The ruling Justice and Development Party (AK Party) will be represented by 21 members; its ally, the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), and the Peoples’ Equality and Democracy Party (DEM) will contribute four lawmakers each, media outlets reported over the weekend. Reports say the committee would be eligible to suggest draft bills if 31 lawmakers approve it.
“Sometimes there are critical turning points in history. It’s important to be on the right side of history. Not entering any lawmakers into the committee under the current circumstances would waste the historical consistency of the CHP,” Özel argued.
“The committee is actually a judicial commission. Seven of our lawmakers in that commission are legal experts. Politicians, too, will be in that committee. It will include people who represent all of Türkiye,” he said.
Özel, however, insisted on the CHP’s condition for “equal representation” in the committee.
The committee’s work will concentrate on the state of PKK terrorists who abandoned arms and those who were incarcerated for aiding and abetting the PKK. The PKK is still regarded as a terrorist group, and the committee will likely debate about its future status once the group fully abandons arms.
Along with major parties, smaller ones have also agreed to contribute to the committee, and they are required to declare the names of their lawmakers to the head of Parliament by Thursday.
Parliament Speaker Numan Kurtulmuş will chair the committee but will not be eligible for voting on its decisions. The committee, the only one operating at the Parliament, which recently began its summer recess, will convene four times weekly at most and will debate reports presented by intelligence and security units monitoring the PKK’s disarmament.
Media reports indicate that the committee will chart a roadmap for the initiative and discuss regulations and amendments to accelerate it, including those similar to the “Homecoming Law” implemented in 2003, which offered lenient sentences for PKK members not involved in terror attacks. The committee’s work will serve as a guideline for future bills on terrorism.
Far-right parties are skeptical of the initiative and even outright hostile to efforts to end terrorism. Among them are the Good Party (IP) and the Victory Party (ZP), which heavily criticized the initiative. The IP shunned the parliamentary committee and will stage rallies across Türkiye in August.
Addressing an event in the western province of Çanakkale on Sunday, Kurtulmuş stated that the committee would oversee the initiative and take steps to implement any necessary political and legal regulations to advance it further.
Meanwhile, on Wednesday, MHP lawmaker Feti Yıldız, after meeting with MHP leader Devlet Bahçeli, described the committee as a “brotherhood and solidarity committee” in a post on X, stoking media reports that the MHP is suggesting a brand-new campaign for the assembly.
In response to the claims, Yıldız, in a following post, said the committee’s name remains “national unity and solidarity committee,” dismissing reports as a “futile attempt to fuel debates through the committee’s title.”
