Proposal And By-election

HURRIYET- Columnist Oktay Eksi comments on the proposal on Iraq and by-election to be held in Siirt. A summary of his column is as follows:
A decision was made on the proposal on Iraq and it’s uncertain whether a new one will be brought or not. Clearly, it’s a matter of courage to bring a new proposal to Parliament. Maybe it’s not only a matter of courage, but also a matter of ‘political ability.’ Speaking to journalists concerning the decision on the proposal, Justice and Development Party (AKP) leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan said, ‘We might have made a binding group decision and said that it was the requirement of Turkish policies, but we didn’t. We knew that if we had done such a thing, the people would have criticized us about the lack of democracy inside the party.’ If this is Mr. Erdogan’s way of thinking, then we are done for because if he wins by-elections to be held in Siirt next week and becomes a deputy, he might be the prime minister soon.
Truly, the only thing that we were incapable of understanding about the issue of proposal is why the AKP didn’t want to make a Parliament group decision. Because the Parliament groups are the basic institutions of parliamentarian democracy and the Parliament group decisions are the integral parts of this whole. It’s the right of each party, which has a group at Parliament, to discuss every subject, which the Constitution doesn’t prohibit to be brought to Parliament. Mr. Erdogan must have confused the subjects that can’t be brought to the group with just the opposite ones. Therefore Mr. Erdogan skipped a subject which nobody can criticize in terms of the democracy inside the party. Therefore the thing that he claims that he knows is wrong.
Clearly, Erdogan thought that if he wanted, they would do that. However, he has the broadest information on each AKP deputy who entered Parliament. Therefore he must have seen the number of those saying, ‘It’s not religiously permissible for a Muslim to shed another Muslim’s blood’ and the AKP deputies who welcomes the developments supporting Kurds in northern Iraq sympathetically. Now a new surprise might be waiting for Erdogan in Siirt. If Democratic People’s Party (DEHAP), which received 32% of the votes in Siirt in November elections, supports Republican People’s Party’s (CHP) candidates this time, then the AKP’s votes of 17% might not be enough for electing Erdogan. Because then two seats out of three would be the CHP’s. If the remaining one seat is given to an independent candidate, not Erdogan but the independent candidate would enter Parliament. The story of a new proposal would end that day.

SOURCE: OFFICE OF THE PRIME MINISTER, DIRECTORATE GENERAL OF PRESS AND INFORMATION