Turkish president encourages AKP MPs to change parliamentary bylaws

Hosting deputies from the AKP at an iftar dinner at his gargantuan presidential palace on June 13, Erdoğan delivered a speech in which he expressed his pleasure with the party headquarters executives and parliamentary group of the “movement” of which he said is “proud” to be the founding leader.

The movement, which began as “the Movement of the Erdemliler [Righteous],” is also the symbol of “renaissance” along with development, justice, democracy, freedoms, grand projects and grand investments in Turkey.

 According to Erdoğan, the deputies in the parliamentary group have put up a historical fight during one of Turkey’s rough periods.

“I know that our MPs work very hard and get very tired. But the duty that you commit yourself to does not give you the permission to complain about working and getting tired. On the contrary, it demands that you work more, produce more and contribute more to our country. I know that there are many important subjects on the agenda of the parliament,” he said.

“You need to accelerate the pace by putting these into practice in order to clear the way for Turkey. For me, changing the Parliament’s Rules of Procedure swiftly is the priority because the current Rules of Procedure virtually ensures primitiveness in the parliament’s present work. We need to get rid of this primitiveness. MPs on top of desks do not befit the Republic of Turkey and the Turkish people,” Erdoğan said in a reference to recent acrimony in which MPs fought over a bill to strip a number of parliamentarians of their immunity from prosecution.

A large group of invitees, including Parliamentary Speaker İsmail Kahraman, Prime Minister Binali Yıldırım, members of the cabinet, deputies of the AKP and members of the ruling party’s highest decision-making body, the 50-seat Central Decision and Executive Board (MKYK), attended the fast-breaking dinner hosted by the president. The deputies were invited without their spouses.

“Provocation-based parliamentary work is unbecoming. Leaping is not enough; our nation needs to fly by overcoming these and with the laws that will fulfill the expectations of our people. We need to do this in order to go above the level of contemporary civilizations,” Erdoğan said, in a reference to a famous remark by the founder of the Republic of Turkey, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk.

“We shall raise our country to the level of the most prosperous and civilized nations of the world. We shall endow our nation with the broadest means and sources of welfare. We shall raise our national culture above the contemporary level of civilization,” Atatürk said in a 1933 speech on the occasion of the 10th anniversary of foundation of the Republic.

“I believe that this parliament and my nation can achieve this. We have the power,” Erdoğan said. “But we won’t nail ourselves to the ground. With God’s help, we will increase our production with investments; we will provide employment while we successfully pursue anti-terror operations. Therefore, hopefully, we will see better days in this struggle against unemployment,” he said.