Bill passes the commission: ‘Appointing trustees to NGOs is unconstitutional’

Click to read the article in Turkish (1) (2)

Drafted by the Parliamentary group of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), the "Bill on Preventing the Spread of Weapons of Mass Destruction" passed the Justice Commission on December 19.

Extending the authority of the Presidency and Interior Ministry, the bill's Article 15 allows the ministry to dismiss the heads of associations, foundations, national and international civil society organizations.

While Article 15 of the bill has been passed by the votes of the AKP MPs and its ally Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), the main opposition Republican People's Party (CHP) and Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) objected to it.

If the related article of bill is passed into law by the General Assembly of the Parliament, the Ministry of Interior and governor's offices will have the authority to dismiss the executives of the non-governmental organizations facing terror investigations, temporarily halt the activities of the organizations and appoint trustees to them, if they find it necessary.

According to the bill, those who are investigated on terror charges could be removed from office by the Interior Ministry as a precaution and the activities of the related NGO could be halted temporarily "when this precaution is not deemed sufficient or when its delay is found objectionable."

The court will examine the dismissal of the NGO heads within 48 hours and the Ministry can appoint trustees as per the Law on Associations.

'It is against the Constitution'

Making a statement about the issue, CHP Eskişehir MP Utku Çakırözer and İstanbul MP Sibel Özdemir have criticized the bill.

"Appointing trustees to associations and civil society organizations and restricting their activities is against the Constitution. With this law, the civil society organizations working in the field of human rights will be made nonfunctional," Çakırözer has protested, adding that "while Turkey has been discussing judicial reform and says that we belong to Europe, it has been deteriorating in terms of the European Union (EU) norms."

The MP has stressed that "a step that restricts the activities of the civil society would not be a reform." "This bill has 43 articles, only six of them are oriented towards hindering the financing of weapons of mass destruction. The number of articles introduced to cut the activities of associations and silencing the civil society is higher," he has said.

"In other words, your target is not weapons of mass destruction, but the associations and civil society organizations that try to defend the human rights of all of us," Çakırözer has stressed further.

"You might see human rights defenders, freedom of expression, women's rights, environment and LGBTI+ rights defenders as a risk to your government," the MP has indicated and briefly added:

"Turkey ranks 119th among 162 countries in terms of human freedoms and 107th among 128 countries in terms of rule of law.

"If this law is passed in its current form, these statistics will not get better; on the contrary, they will get worse."

'Quality of life getting worse everyday'

CHP İstanbul MP Özdemir has also said, "In the Presidential Government System, the quality of life is being reduced with each passing day while the executive is getting more authority. We have witnessed the most recent example of it at the Justice Commission. If the bill is passed into law, we will drift farther away from the EU." (DŞ/SD)