Ihsan Bal Head of USAK Science Committee printable version send your friend

Thursday, 25 February 2010

Hundreds of people visit the parliament every day. Everyone seeks a remedy for their pain. Over time, the parliament starts to lose its plausibility when it cannot help with the problems of people who seek its help. The "Parliament Research Commissionsâ€� are a typical example of this situation. Up until now, the established research commissions, related to the unresolved assassinations, shady internal fights, mafias, and gangs that have been leaked to the state, have reached a final point which is always a ’state secret’, in other words –deadlock. Because the Turkish public have memorized books since primary school that say they have no power over the deputies to whom they have unconditionally delivered their sovereignty with the election, they do not understand why some of the information has been kept from the parliamentary inquiries and investigations. The most recent example of this is the representatives of the ’Social Memory Platform’ constituted by people whose relatives were killed in suspicious murders over the years.

These families visited the Speaker of the Parliament of Turkey and the political parties in recent days. In a country, the parliament is the right address for the formation of law and for the detection of unresolved assassinations. In this regard, the members of the Platform set out from the right point. During their visits, the members of the Platform called for the establishment of a research commission for the kind of crime that resulted in the murder of their relatives, in order to abolish the time limits and re-investigate the crimes. Another matter on which they have focused is to transform the subject into a total initiative without making it a contentious issue between parties.

The response of the Speaker of the Parliament, Å?ahin, who emphasizes that satisfactory results could not be obtained from the already established research commissions, is far from promising. The Speaker said ’I get your demand for the research commission. However, the results you seek cannot be obtained by establishing a research commission with the existing internal regulations of the TBMM (Turkish Grand National Assembly).’ When a similar problem was mentioned in a TV program, the Prime Minister gave hints regarding the effectiveness of the established commissions saying ’the Parliament Research Commissions do not have the power to give sanctions.’

There are high expectations from the Grand Assembly, but it is obvious that the control, inquiry and inspection authorizations of the Research Commissions are rather limited. Being the center of the national will, the parliament is going to be pushed more and more by the community. If we are not cheated and if the real will is there, the parliament will not have any excuse. Therefore, the obvious thing to do is to transform the "parliamentary research commissionsâ€� into the "control and inquiry commissionsâ€� and to increase their authorization rapidly. It would be a development in line with the expectations of the public were the parliament, especially, to implement an infrastructure as is seen in the West. This structure, ’the intelligence control and inquiry commission,’ would include members who have worked with issues such as the intelligence bureaucracy and state secrets. In fact, Å?ahin made an official statement for this issue: ’Change in the internal regulations that are still in force at the TBMM is on the agenda. While this arrangement is underway, a regulation regarding the research commission can be made.’ It seems that the Prime Minister displays the will related to the unresolved murders to the point that the government will do what is necessary.

Also, the view of the CHP (Republican People’s Party) on the unresolved murders is in the direction of being a great burden to the state. On behalf of the CHP, Kemal Anadol asserted that ’If there is an unresolved murder, the offender of the murders is the state itself. The groups and people inside the state, while hiding the responsible ones for murders, struggled to bring the cases into a deadlock.’

When we gather these three views together, right now is seems that the Social Memory Platform would create sensibility and awareness on the issue of unresolved murders. We hope that the parliament manages to clear a dark page of Turkey’s history while establishing commissions endowed with legal authorizations on this issue.