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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
“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.<\/p>\n
“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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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”.<\/p>\n
“This process is a revolutionary transformation that will determine the future of both Turkey and the region,” he said.<\/p>\n
Erdogan has long been hankering after changes to the constitution to open up the way for him to be re-elected.<\/p>\n
The current constitution does not allow him to run again in 2028 without the support of 360 lawmakers — support he doesn’t currently have.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
fo\/hmw\/rmb<\/p>\n
\u00a9 Agence France-Presse<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":8505,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sitemap_exclude":false,"_sitemap_priority":"","_sitemap_frequency":"","jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":{"subtitle":"","format":"standard","override":[{"template":"7","parallax":"1","fullscreen":"1","layout":"left-sidebar","sidebar":"default-sidebar","second_sidebar":"default-sidebar","sticky_sidebar":"1","share_position":"topbottom","share_float_style":"share-monocrhome","show_share_counter":"1","show_view_counter":"1","show_featured":"1","show_post_meta":"1","show_post_author":"1","show_post_author_image":"1","show_post_date":"1","post_date_format":"default","post_date_format_custom":"Y\/m\/d","show_post_category":"1","show_post_reading_time":"0","post_reading_time_wpm":"300","post_calculate_word_method":"str_word_count","show_zoom_button":"0","zoom_button_out_step":"2","zoom_button_in_step":"3","show_post_tag":"1","show_prev_next_post":"1","show_popup_post":"1","number_popup_post":"1","show_author_box":"1","show_post_related":"0","show_inline_post_related":"0"}],"image_override":[{"single_post_thumbnail_size":"crop-500","single_post_gallery_size":"crop-500"}],"trending_post_position":"meta","trending_post_label":"Trending","sponsored_post_label":"Sponsored by","disable_ad":"0"},"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":{"view_counter_number":"0","share_counter_number":"0","like_counter_number":"0","dislike_counter_number":"0"},"jnews_post_split":{"post_split":[{"template":"1","tag":"h2","numbering":"asc","mode":"normal","first":"0","enable_toc":"0","toc_type":"normal"}]},"footnotes":""},"categories":[79],"tags":[95,448,103,119],"class_list":["post-8504","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-regional","tag-conflict","tag-kurds","tag-politics","tag-turkey"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.iq\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8504","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.iq\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.iq\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.iq\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.iq\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8504"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/news.iq\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8504\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.iq\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8505"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.iq\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8504"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.iq\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8504"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.iq\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8504"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}