Constitution Commission set to extend work until end of June

ANKARA - Hürriyet Daily News

The work of Parliament's Constitution Conciliation Commission is set to be extended until the end of the Parliament’s legislative year. DAILY NEWS photo, Selahattin SÖNMEZ

The work of Parliament's Constitution Conciliation Commission is set to be extended until the end of the Parliament’s legislative year at the end of June, after a long meeting that lasted for more than six hours May 3. Commission members agreed to meet again on May 7 to make a final decision on the drafting process. The end of April was the deadline given by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan to the Commission, however main opposition parties argued that the drafting of a new Constitution should not be limited by time. 

Hürriyet Daily News has learned that Parliamentary Speaker Cemil Çiçek told the Commission members that the year-and-a-half work lacked in efficiency, noting that the deadline had been extended three times. Representatives of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) said during the meeting that “they did not want to be the party that leaves the table” before agreeing to extend the period until the end of the legislative year, at the end of June. However, the AKP argued that the work should be finalized by the end of the extension period, while Republican People’s Party (CHP) and Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) rejected once again any imposition of a deadline. The pro-Kurdish Peace and Democracy Party (BDP) said that time should be used more efficiently. 

In 17 months of work, the Commission had so far been able to reach a consensus on only 30 of the 125 articles discussed, while the remaining 95 articles remained controversial.    

Some members of the Commission are also in favor of preparing a draft text indicating the propositions of all four parties in Parliament, in which the consensual articles will figure in green while the articles that cause disagreements will figure in red.