MPs Main Activity's Harassing Each Other

During the last two legislative periods, main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) MP Ensar Öğüt and ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) MP Lokman Ayva led the list of absent MP’s from parliament meetings. Independent Tunceli MP Kamer Genç once again succeeded in being the first in verbal argumentation and acts of harassment.

Association of Committees of Monitoring MPs and the Elected (TÜMİKOM) releases its fifth annual report. It includes statistics on each MP’s activities regarding legislation and regulation.

It reveals that the most frequent activities of the MPs are “verbal harassment” and “exclusive dialogues.” For example, half of Nationalist Movement Party’s (MHP) Oktay Vural’s activities in the parliament was consisted of those. He had committed 794 cases of verbal harassment.

Following last general elections on July 22nd, 2007, there are 548 MP’s in the Turkish parliament. Only 48 are women.

A total of four MPs aren’t featured in the report as no activities of them were identified. Those were Haluk İpek (AKP), Kudbettin Arzu (AKP), Mustafa Erdoğan Yetenç (independent) and Seyit Eyipoğlu (independent).

According to the report, during the relative period,

• There were 12 thousand 421 cases of verbal harassment or one-on-one dialoguing.
• 6 thousand 592 motions for parliamentary investigations were filed. 5 thousand 338 motions for an amendment to draft legislation, 4 thousand 742 motions of question were filed. Of those, less than half were responded to.
• Among the parties which has a parliamentary group, only the pro-Kurdish Democratic Society Party’s list of most often activities doesn’t begin with verbal harassment. Again, women MPs are less involved in harassing others than men.
• Most absent MPs are DTP’s. Most attending are AKP’s. A total of 90 MPs have complaints about them which require their parliamentary immunity from prosecution lifted by parliamentary order. 49 MPs of AKP, 18 MPs of CHP, 20 MPs of DTP and 2 MPs of MHP are on the row.(EÜ/AGÜ)

* Full report is available at TÜMİKOM web site.