İsmail Kahraman re-elected as Turkish Parliament speaker

ANKARA

Parliament re-elected the ruling Justice and Development Party’s (AKP) candidate, İsmail Kahraman, as its speaker of the assembly on Nov. 20.

Current Parliament Speaker Kahraman, whose two-year term started in November 2015 and will end on Nov. 22 this year, was re-elected with 289 votes in the third round of secret ballots at parliament.

“We should not hurt each other with small calculations and wrong thoughts. We should not be aggressive, we should be a person who solves problems with negotiation and talking,” Kahraman said in his first speech as parliamentary speaker for the second term of 26th Grand National Assembly on Nov. 20.

“For the construction of a society without fights and conflicts, our lawmakers should set an example and they should conduct their duties in harmony with the law and regulations,” he added.

Parliament voted in three rounds to elect Kahraman because in the first two rounds of the voting at least 367 votes are needed for election. In the third round a simple majority of 276 votes are sufficient.

Kahraman received 260 and 257 votes in the first two rounds of the voting and was elected in the third round.

With 317 seats in parliament, AKP put forward two candidates in the speaker’s race. Its second candidate, Tamer Dağlı, received 38 votes in the first round and 37 votes in the second round, before dropping out in the third round.

Kahraman’s opponent from the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) was former Finance Minister Zekeriya Temizel.

The CHP has 131 seats in parliament and Temizel received 113 votes in the first round of voting, 122 in the second round, and 124 in the third round.

The Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) has 36 seats at parliament and its candidate Celal Adan received 40 votes in first two rounds and 36 in the third round.

The Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) nominated jailed MP Selma Irmak as a symbolic act and she received 39 votes in the first round of voting, 38 votes in the second round and 37 votes in the third round.

Having 54 seats in parliament, the HDP currently has eight lawmakers in jail over terrorism charges, while five of its previous deputies were stripped of their MP status after being convicted.