A new Turkish parliament dominated by the Islamic-oriented party of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has been sworn in, preparing the way for a new government that was reminded in the opening speech to safeguard the nation's secular principles.
At the start of Saturday's ceremony, interim Speaker of Parliament Sukru Elekdag of the main opposition Republican People's Party said Erdogan -- expected to head the new government -- should act with common sense to prevent polarization in politics.
"Pursuing a policy to protect secular and democratic values would help the country attain its goal of achieving the contemporary level of civilization," Elekdag said.
The opposition party and the country's fiercely secular military have stressed that the next president, who will be elected by parliament within a month, must sincerely uphold secularity.
Erdogan's Justice and Development Party will have 341 seats in the 550-member legislature -- 10 seats down from its position in the outgoing parliament -- but still firmly in control of a majority. In the two decades before Erdogan's first majority government in 2002, Turkey had been led by coalitions that often failed to pass legislation. Political infighting had led to instability that deterred foreign investors.
President Ahmet Necdet Sezer was expected to ask Erdogan today to form the next government, the Anatolia news agency said on Saturday.
The main opposition Republican People's Party will have 99 seats. The far right Nationalist Action Party returned to the Parliament with 70 seats, after a five-year absence. The center-left Democratic Left Party has 13 seats.
A revived Kurdish party -- the Democratic Society Party -- will hold 21 seats. For many Kurds, the party's revival stokes hopes for a new era in their struggle for more rights. But many Turks are afraid of a party suspected of being under the influence of the Kurdistan Workers Party or PKK, an organization labeled as terrorist by the US and the EU and which has fought to carve out a separate Kurdish state.
It is the first time the group is represented in the legislature since its ouster in 1994 over alleged ties to separatist Kurds.
The party officials promised not to stir up trouble during the swearing-in ceremony on Saturday as their predecessors did. But a leader of the Kurdish party, lawmaker Ahmet Turk, in an interview with private NTV television refused to declare the PKK a terrorist organization, claiming that it would be against his role in seeking peace.
All other parties in parliament have refused to cooperate with the Kurdish lawmakers unless they denounce the PKK as a terrorist group.
Once the new government is formed, parliament must choose a new president.
The Nationalist Action party has already pledged to help the government achieve the quorum needed to elect a president.
‘CROSSING THE LINE’: China’s embassy in Seoul criticized US Forces Korea Commander General Xavier Brunson, asking if his ‘hostile’ remarks were authorized by Washington South Korea and the US are in talks over recent public remarks by the commander of US Forces Korea, Seoul’s presidential office said yesterday, after the comments drew sharp criticism from China. In a recent podcast interview, US Forces Korea Commander General Xavier Brunson described South Korea as “the dagger in the heart of Asia” from China’s east coast, prompting the Chinese embassy in Seoul to say that he had “truly crossed the line.” The interview came amid growing speculation that Washington might seek to expand the role of US Forces Korea in countering the growing regional influence of China, a key
Through the noise of rushing papers and whirring belts at a print factory in Kyoto, two creators watch their photo essay come to life in broadsheet form — part of an effort to win new audiences in the age of artificial intelligence (AI). Despite the decline of the publishing industry, self-publication and handmade “zine” magazines are growing in popularity in Japan, reflecting the nation’s enduring love of paper in the digital era. While speaking to Agence France-Presse at the plant, his hands black with ink, one of the creators, Kazuma Obara, said: “I think [paper] is a medium that engages all five
Australian researchers have trained lab-grown brain cells on a silicon computer chip to play the 1990s shooter game Doom and said they are just scratching the surface of what the neurons could be capable of doing. It is the science-fiction work of biotech boffins at Cortical Labs, who researched and developed the technology that harnesses the workings of the brain’s networking system. Each so-called “biological computer” contains about 200,000 living human brain cells, grown from stem cells that were harvested from blood donations. Having mastered the simple computer game Pong, where a paddle is moved up and down to send a ball
France experienced its hottest spring on record, the French weather service said on Tuesday, after an exceptional early heat wave that also broke highs for the season in England and Wales. Meteo-France said the average nationwide temperature over March to May was 13.8°C — about 1.7°C above the norm, and surpassing records set in 2011 and 2020. “The warmest spring since records began in 1900,” it said in a bulletin. All three months were warmer than average, but the onset of an “unprecedented heatwave” late last month pushed the mercury to highs typically seen at the height of the summer. “Our country had never
RSS