‘New charter will not solve all problems’

Parliament Speaker Cemil Çiçek says people should not anticipate too much from the new constitution because not all of Turkey’s problems arise from the current constitution.

“It is incorrect to expect that the constitution will solve all of the problems. Current problems of Turkey do not derive from the constitution. The constitution is important, but the idea of ‘the [new] constitution equals zero problems’ is wrong. This is fooling ourselves,” Çiçek said on state-run TRT Sunday.

Çiçek does not lean toward the calls of the opposition for democratic reforms to be carried out simultaneously with the drafting of the new constitution. “If we bring the issues other than its task to this commission, we cannot maintain this process efficiently. We said we should finalize it by the end of 2012,” Çiçek said.

The new constitution by itself cannot solve the Kurdish issue, Çiçek said. “It’s not true to consider the new constitution will finalize all of the problems in Turkey. This would make our task more difficult. The constitution provides capability to produce solution to the legislation.” Çiçek said the new constitution will bring solutions to the democratic deficit and the poor democratic standards of Turkey.