MHP REITERATES OPPOSITION TO REFORM PACKAGE

Today’s Zaman
April 7 2010
Turkey

Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) leader Devlet Bahceli has criticized
the ruling Justice and Development Party’s (AK Party) constitutional
reform package, stating once again that his party will not support it.

Speaking to members of his party during the MHP’s parliamentary group
meeting yesterday, Bahceli said the AK Party has "forgotten" about the
MHP for the past two-and-a-half years and has sometimes even been "put
down." He stated that his party has been calling for constitutional
change for years. However, he said they were against the AK Party’s
proposed package, noting that de-militarizing a constitution cannot
only be possible by having civilians redraft it. "The 1982 Constitution
was prepared by a commission of civilians appointed by the military."

He said the current reform package waiting for a vote in Parliament
was being forced on the country by the AK Party. He also claimed
that the AK Party had withdrawn the package two days ago due to
controversy surrounding the existence of Parliament Speaker Mehmet
Å~^ahin’s signature among the signatures under the proposal.

Bahceli claimed that those deputies whose signatures appear on the
proposal do not know that their signatures are there. "This will be
remembered as an unprecedented scandal in the history of the republic."

Bahceli also criticized the AK Party’s foreign policy, particularly
Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s decision to pay an official
visit to the US, where a resolution recognizing the 1915 killings of
Anatolian Armenians as genocide was passed by the US House Committee
on Foreign Affairs not long ago. He said Erdogan’s initial reaction
to the genocide resolution had been welcomed, but the government has
been quick to backpedal on that stance. He accused the AK Party of
acting as a regional agent for global powers.

Meanwhile, a former MHP deputy, Orhan Bıcakcıoglu, who is still
a member of that party, said the right move would be to back the
constitutional reform package. "If I was in Parliament as a MHP deputy,
I would vote in favor of the package. I will vote yes if there is a
referendum on it," he told Karadeniz’den, a local newspaper in the
Black Sea region. He said the package was not an AK Party project,
noting that any party would have done it. "It just happened to occur
under their term," he said.