First session on parliamentary immunity starts
The first discussion session of the constitutional amendment bill, which is about the lifting of the parliamentary immunity of lawmakers who have outstanding dossiers against them, will be held in the general assembly of the parliament today.
The general assembly will come together today at 15.00 and again on Friday at 10.00.
After long discussions and quarrels, this bill was approved by the constitutional committee on May 2.
Before the meeting of the general assembly, the numbers of dossiers have been increasing. With 16 dossiers presented to the parliament yesterday, the total number of dossiers reached 667.
16 new dossiers
16 new dossiers include the dossiers against CHP Chair Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu and HDP co-chairs Selahattin Demirtaş and Figen Yüksekdağ.
With 405 dossiers, HDP is the party which have most dossiers against its lawmakers. Declaring that they will veto the proposal, HDP will attend the sessions.
MEP's of European Parliament call for veto
Before the bill comes to the parliamentary agenda, 61 members of European Parliament released a open letter making a call to the members of the Turkish parliament. 61 MEP urged the Turkish MPs to veto the bill on parliamentary immunity.
Here are the highlights from the letter released with the title of “Silencing democratically elected members of the parliament is not the way to deal with problems":
"We are deeply concerned by the bill that will lift the parliamentary immunity of 129 MPs out of 550. As publicly presented by representatives of the government, this bill openly seeks to destroy HDP, given the fact 49 HDP members will be affected by this amendment.
“Opposition is an indispensable part of democracies and a fundamental value of EU. Silencing democratically elected opposition MPs for their political statements is the obstruction of parliament and against democratic principles. Excluding democratically elected members of the parliament is not the way to deal with the Kurdish problem.
"On the contrary, if this bill passes, it would cause an escalation of clashes in the Kurdish region of Turkey. We urge the members of Turkish parliament not to support this bill which would move Turkey away from the path to EU."
