Parliament speaker sees constitutional amendment as Turkey's most urgent and important issue

 

ISTANBUL (A.A) - July 21, 2011 - Turkey's parliament speaker defined on Thursday constitutional amendment as Turkey's most urgent and important issue.
Speaker Cemil Cicek said Turkey should amend its constitution, and this issue should be discussed in coming days.
"Constitutional amendments is Turkey's most urgent and important issue," Cicek said during his meeting with members of Independent Industrialists' & Businessmen's Association (MUSIAD), headed by chairman Omer Cihad Vardan, in Ankara.
When reading out the government program at parliament earlier in July, Turkey's Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said the nation expected the parliament to rewrite a constitution.
"The government and AK Party is fully determined about a new constitution, and as AK Party, we wish preparation of a new constitution with as broad participation as possible, and we wish that the new constitution will be a social contract reflecting demands of all social segments," Erdogan told parliamentarians.
Erdogan said all political parties pledged to rewrite a constitution during their election campaigns, and the parliament was fully authorized, had the power and will to make a new constitution. 
"The structure of the new parliament enables us to rewrite the constitution with the broadest representation and compromise," the prime minister said.
Erdogan said the nation would decide how the new constitution would be, and AK Party believed that the new constitution should embrace and integrate every one, and should be a free and liberal one, not oppressive. 
The premier said international documents like United Nations (UN) Declaration of Human Rights and European Convention on Human Rights should be taken into consideration when rewriting the constitution.
Addressing the nation from the balcony of the AK Party headquarters in Ankara after June 12th general elections, Erdogan said the Turkish nation had not only authorized the party to form a new government but also to prepare a new constitution.
Erdogan said, "our nation has given us the message that the new constitution should be made with compromise, consultation and negotiation."
"We will be seeking consensus with the main opposition, the opposition, parties outside the parliament, the media, NGOs, with academics, with anyone who has something to say. We are going to prepare a civilian and liberal constitution all together. The new constitution will have an equal distance to each of all 74 million citizens. The new constitution will respond to demands of our citizens for freedom, democracy, peace and justice," he said.