Kurtulmuş Reelected as Turkish Parliament Speaker

Candidates from five political parties with groups in Parliament competed in polls.

AK Party’s ally, the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), did not have a candidate and endorsed Kurtulmuş.

The main opposition Republican People's Party (CHP) is running with its lawmaker from eastern Artvin province, Uğur Bayraktutan, while Parliament’s third-largest, the Peoples' Equality and Democracy Party (DEM Party), nominated their Diyarbakır representative Cengiz Çandar for the post.

President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, following the vote, congratulated Kurtulmuş.

In his speech, Kurtulmuş said: “We all agree, and I also believe, that the most urgent issue that must be handled in this period is the terror-free Türkiye initiative, which emerges as a historic opportunity.

Kurtulmuş was referring to the initiative launched by government ally Devlet Bahçeli, head of the MHP, who called on the PKK’s jailed leader Abdullah Öcalan to appeal to the PKK to lay down arms last year.

Soon, his call evolved into a new initiative that saw DEM Party lawmakers visiting Öcalan in the island prison where he is incarcerated in the Marmara Sea. As a result and in a landmark development, the PKK last month announced its dissolution and the end of its four-decade terror campaign that cost tens of thousands of lives in Türkiye, as well as in Iraq and Syria.

Saying that a commission will be formed in Parliament to focus on the initiative, Kurtulmuş added: “It is the common responsibility of all our political parties to come together, negotiate, discuss the issues under this roof and get the results openly. With the first contacts we made, I saw that all of our parties are ready to contribute to an effort within the TBMM.”

“The terror-free Türkiye issue is at the same time an issue of democracy,” he underlined, indicating that it will also strengthen unity within the country.

He said that one of the most important achievements is that 16 political parties are represented in the parliament.

New constitution

Kurtulmuş also touched upon efforts for a new constitution in Türkiye.

“Our responsibility to future generations is to crown the second century of our Republic with a civil, democratic, participatory and inclusive constitution.”

The government has been pushing to overhaul Türkiye’s Constitution for over a decade now, which was enforced in 1982 following a military coup that led to the detention of hundreds of thousands of people along with mass trials, torture and executions, which still represents a dark period in Turkish political history. The document has undergone nearly 20 amendments over the years to keep up with global and regional geopolitical conjectures.