The National Solidarity, Brotherhood and Democracy Committee will hold its 12th meeting on Wednesday.
Parliament Speaker Numan Kurtulmuş will chair the meeting of the committee, the only working body of Parliament, which is currently in a summer recess. The committee, comprising lawmakers from the ruling Justice and Development Party (AK Party) and several opposition parties, has been developing a roadmap and guidelines for Parliament to guide the future of the terror-free Türkiye initiative since Parliament went into recess in August.
The committee is expected to wrap up its work by October, when Parliament returns from recess, although its mandate can be extended.
The Foundation for Political, Economic and Social Research (SETA), Dicle Social Research Center (DITAM), Rawest Research, Kurdish Studies Center (KSC), Foundation for Ecopolitical Culture, Education and Research Foundation (EKEAV), Center for Sociopolitical Field Studies (SAHAM), Turkish Economic Policy Research Foundation (TEPAV) and Center for Middle Eastern Studies (ORSAM) representatives will speak at the next session of the committee.
The committee aims to hear from diverse segments of society for contributions to the initiative. At its first meeting, it hosted ministers and the intelligence chief. In the following meetings, it hosted families of terror victims and counterterrorism veterans, heads of bar associations and former parliamentary speakers. Families of terrorist group PKK members seeking to reunite with their children were also heard by the committee, which most recently hosted business associations and labor unions, particularly those based in southeastern Türkiye, which has been a hotbed of PKK terrorism for decades.
The initiative was on the agenda of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan last Thursday as he hosted families of terror victims and veterans at the Presidential Complex in Ankara.
“We cannot tolerate any statement or any action that will hurt the memory of our martyrs and break the hearts of our veterans,” Erdoğan told the families at a ceremony for the employment of next of kin of martyrs and veterans in the public sector.
Erdoğan also mentioned that his government paid hefty prices in the past two decades but never “betrayed the trust of veterans, confidence of families of martyrs who are entrusted to us.”
His remarks were a veiled reply to criticism of the initiative, especially by hardliners who termed it a betrayal of the memory of those killed by the PKK. Families of terror victims have been supportive of the initiative, according to opinion polls and statements of associations representing them.
“We fought against all kinds of terrorism and never let dirty plots prevail. The graves of our martyrs are our trenches in our fight against treason and invasion. Traitors and invaders have never been able to seize them,” Erdoğan said.
“We are fighting for living with honor today. Together, we will reach the goal of a terror-free Türkiye, with hope and patient steps. With your support, we will complete this process with dignity, without betraying the memory of martyrs.”
The initiative is the brainchild of Devlet Bahçeli, head of government ally Nationalist Movement Party (MHP). The government facilitated the initiative after Bahçeli’s call to the PKK’s jailed ringleader, Abdullah Öcalan, to urge his group to dissolve. Turkish intelligence now monitors the current stage of the initiative, which took a new turn after PKK members started abandoning arms at a ceremony in northern Iraq this summer.
The PKK killed tens of thousands of people in its violent campaign for more than four decades. Its attacks began in the countryside in southeastern Türkiye before spreading to big cities in the west. Among the terrorist group’s victims are civil servants working in the southeastern and eastern parts of Türkiye, security personnel, as well as civilians, whom the group viewed as collaborating with authorities. The group’s indiscriminate attacks claiming civilian lives accumulated public outrage over the years, and the state has long followed policies strictly involving constant military and police operations to wipe out the group.
