Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğanhas reiterated his government’s opposition to the release of arrested lawmakers and said recently enacted legal amendments were drafted so as not to interrupt ongoing cases. His statements contradicted those made by his deputy Bekir Bozdağ over the weekend, Hurriyet reports.
“The third judiciary package does not contain any specific regulation on this issue [of arrested lawmakers]. We have never said and we will never say ‘yes’ to the calls of the CHP[Republican People’s Party], the Nationalist Movement Party [MHP] and the BDP [Peace and Democracy Party] about arrested lawmakers. This should be known,” Erdoğan said Wednesday in the address to his party’s provincial branches.
Erdoğan described the third judicial package as a reform aimed at generally addressing the problems of the judiciary and therefore having no intention of affecting specific cases. “It has been seen that speculations over the third package have no meaning. No specific regulation could cause ongoing cases and the struggle against terror and plotters to fail,” he said.
The adoption of the third judicial package raised hope for the eight jailed deputies, hailing from the ranks of the three opposition parties. The package allows judges to implement judicial control without a maximum limit which has been seen as a formula for the release of jailed deputies as well as thousands of other inmates. Furthermore, Bozdağ’s statement over the weekend had been interpreted as a green light for the release of lawmakers currently behind bars.
