Turkey's parliament comes to blows over Erdogan-enabling reforms
Proposed constitutional reforms have sparked all-out brawling in Turkey's parliament, complete with physical and verbal attacks on female opposition figures.
For the past 10 days, Turkey's parliament has been going through the painstaking, and literally painful, process of amending the constitution. If approved, the amendments will clip parliament’s power extensively while providing unchecked freedoms to the executive branch.
This process is taking place as the country is still under emergency law and 11 members of the Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) are in jail. Only the left-wing parties — the HDP and the Republican People's Party (CHP) — oppose the reform proposal, and their numbers are not sufficient.
Since the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) shut down the media outlets it could not control, almost none of the naysaying lawmakers’ speeches are aired on TV. Opposition parties struggle to generate transparency and get their voices out to the public by using their cell phones and capturing and sharing images and videos on social media. In addition, they strive to show the public the reckless behavior of some AKP and Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) members, such as their breaking the internal voting rules by openly displaying their votes in each round of what is supposed to be a secret ballot.
It's mind-boggling that the majority of Turkish parliamentarians are voting willingly to surrender power to an imperial executive and are becoming increasingly violent and lawless against their colleagues.
