Turkey must change its constitution if it is to properly flesh out the peace process with the Kurdish militant PKK, a top adviser to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Monday.
Erdogan’s government is trying draw a line under the decades-long conflict with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which in May announced an end to its bloody insurgency that claimed tens of thousands of lives.
Two months later, its fighters began laying down their weapons, raising hopes it would begin a process of reform that would usher in democratic changes to improve the rights of Turkey’s Kurds who constitute about 20 percent of the population.
The pro-Kurdish DEM party, which played a key role in facilitating the process, has laid out a string of measures to be addressed that are being studied by a cross-party parliamentary commission tasked with preparing the legal framework to guide the peace efforts.
In a lengthy interview with HaberTurk news website, Erdogan’s chief adviser Mehmet Ucum said many of the proposed steps would need to be addressed within the scope of a new constitution.
“Under conditions where terrorism has ended, the time is ripe to implement a new constitution that protects and strengthens Turkey’s geographical integrity, political unity and external security,” he said.
“There are issues to be evaluated within the scope of developing and strengthening democracy and the new constitution,” said Ucum, who heads up a key legal advisory board.
He went on to list several of DEM’s key demands such as redefining Turkish citizenship, and changes to allow education in the Kurdish language and local government reforms — both of which he said would require constitutional change.
Under a new constitution, “the fact that Turkish citizenship is a legal bond rather than an ethnic one will be emphasised more clearly”, he said, also indicating a provision could be introduced to “regulate the procedures and principles regarding teaching in languages other than Turkish”.
“This process is a revolutionary transformation that will determine the future of both Turkey and the region,” he said.
Erdogan has long been hankering after changes to the constitution to open up the way for him to be re-elected.
The current constitution does not allow him to run again in 2028 without the support of 360 lawmakers — support he doesn’t currently have.
But that could change if DEM and its 57 lawmakers were to offer its backing — which some critics believe was a key factor behind Ankara’s efforts to seek a deal with the Kurds via an unexpected olive branch to the PKK’s jailed leader Abdullah Ocalan last year.
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© Agence France-Presse
