Gov’t to submit constitutional changes to endorse family: Erdoğan

ANKARA

One of the first things the government will do is to strengthen the family by protecting it from aberrant trends, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has said, informing that his government will submit a constitutional amendment to this end.

Türkiye’s new cabinet was convened late on June 8 under the leadership of President Erdoğan to discuss the current economic and political matters as well as the steps to be taken in the coming period.

“Pay attention to these two words: Stability and trust. We will build the Century of Türkiye with stability and trust,” Erdoğan said at a press briefing after the meeting. “I say one more thing: We will take all sorts of steps, including the establishment of Family and Youth Bank, for the protection of the family the backbone of our society against aberrant trends,” he said.

President Erdoğan added that the constitutional amendment proposal that his Justice and Development Party (AKP) prepared before the elections will be submitted to the parliament.

The ruling AKP’s amendment concerns a change to article 41 to re-define the composition of the family by stressing that it is composed by the marriage of a man and a woman to avoid future attempts to allow same sex marriage in Türkiye.

The AKP and its main political ally, the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) gained 323 seats in parliament as a result of the May 14 parliamentary polls. They need the backing of at least around 40 votes to take a constitutional change to a referendum.

Earthquake, education, health, economy…

President Erdoğan listed the priorities of his cabinet as tackling the problems of the earthquake-hit region including reconstruction of new permanent homes, decreasing inflation and resolving economic problems and continuing investments in education and health.

“The aim of being one of the top 10 economies of the world requires working and producing more,” he said, stressing that the members of his new cabinet have the necessary qualifications for being among the architects of the Century of Türkiye.

“On the other hand, we also admit that the job of the cabinet is not easy. This difficulty is not only related with the problems that we have to overcome or the targets we have to achieve. The real difficulty is about further increasing the heritage,” he suggested.

Recalling that healing the wounds of the February earthquakes will continue to be at the top of the agenda for the government and that 319,000 homes will be given to the quake-victims within a year, Erdoğan said, “We will make our cities in the earthquake zone livelier than before in terms of economic, commercial, social and cultural ways.”