More than 20 years have passed since Turkish President rajab Tayyip Erdoğan came to power and during this time Erdoğan has controlled power to such an extent that the Turkish Parliament has now become just a rubber stamp. At one time, Turkey was expected to become a role model for the Middle East and Arab countries, but this journey did not last long.
On 16 July 2016 there was an uprising against Erdoğan. Although the rebellion was unsuccessful, it gave Erdoğan the opportunity he had been looking for for a long time. In fact, after the rebellion, Rajab Tayyab Erdoğan made several changes in power, due to which Erdoğan ended the power of the Turkish constitution, which used to control the government. At the same time, Erdoğan dismissed a large number of government employees, judges, people in academia, health workers and military officers. Now Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has full control over the country’s judiciary appointments and the entire system.
15,664 questions were asked orally to the Government of Turkey, but out of these only 1298 questions were answered. 2145 questions were asked to the Ministry of Justice and only three of them were answered.
Abdullah Bojkurt, who runs the Nordic Research Monitoring Network, has claimed in a report that from October 2021 to September 2022, the opposition presented 716 draft bills to the Turkish Parliament, but none of them was discussed. This is a world record in itself. The ruling party AKP and its ally MHP introduced 80 draft bills during this period and all of them were approved and eventually became law. This shows that the opposition in Turkey has been reduced to mere debate and has been stripped of the power to make laws.
Another worrisome fact is that many parliamentary committees have not met even a single meeting and many committees have held only one or two meetings. In democratic countries, the work of the parliament is to monitor the work of the government. There is freedom to ask questions, which ensures accountability, transparency and better governance, but the right to ask questions has almost been abolished in the Parliament of Turkey, and most of the questions that are asked are not answered. Let’s go
According to a report, 15,664 questions were asked orally to the government of Turkey but out of these only 1298 questions were answered. 2145 questions were asked to the Ministry of Justice and only three of them were answered. At the same time, 1597 questions were asked to the Ministry of Interior and out of these only six got answers. These figures show that transparency, accountability is completely absent in the Parliament of Turkey.
In a democracy, when the governments present the budget, it is presented in the Parliament for debate. Where it is debated and the governments also change the budget provisions on the objection of the opposition, but in Turkey, the budget made by the Erdoğan government is sent to some relevant parliamentary committees and these committees also have people from the ruling party. And then the budget is passed without much change.
Opposition parties in Turkey have been demanding the formation of a commission to investigate several important issues such as Turkey’s preparedness for earthquakes, tax regulations and offshore account issues, but their demands are continuously being rejected by the ruling parties. Even the speaker of the Turkish parliament is Numan Kurtulmus, the deputy chairman of the ruling party AKP. Due to which the ruling party gets the laws passed by the Parliament without any difficulty. ( PLC/GT )
