Opposition parties submitted 3,076 bills in four years; none of them passed by parliament

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Checks and Balances Network, a coalition of about 300 NGOs in Turkey, has released a report examining the parliamentary work in the fourth legislative session of the 27th parliamentary term.

A total of 105 General Assembly sessions were held during the legislative year, which began on October 1, 2020 and ended on July 18, 2021.

Visitors were banned throughout the legislative years due to the coronavirus pandemic. By the end of November, 105 MPs had contracted the virus.

Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) deputy Ömer Faruk Gergerlioğlu was stripped of his MP status and sent to prison during this term. He was released and reinstated in mid-July following a top court ruling.

Legislative proposals

Since the start of the parliamentary term in July 2018, the ruling block of the Justice and Development Party (AKP) and the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) have submitted 572 bills and the opposition parties have submitted 3,076 bills.

All 172 bills that were passed by the parliament had been submitted by the AKP. Five of the six proposals submitted jointly by the AKP and the MHP were approved.

In the last legislative session, 81 laws were passed by the parliament. Seventeen of them were "omnibus laws" that altered 149 laws. A total of 230 laws were amended during the session.

Motions

During the legislative session, MPs submitted some 14,223 parliamentary questions. Only 1,244 of them were answered in due time. While 5,367 motions were answered after the deadline, 6,239 were not replied at all.

Out of 1,425 motions for a parliamentary inquiry, 50 were accepted and four parliamentary inquiry committees were established. The remaining 1,375 motions have not yet been put on the parliamentary agenda.

Among the issues examined by parliamentary committees were male violence, discrimination and the marine mucilage problem in the Sea of Marmara.

The main opposition Republican People's Party (CHP), its ally İYİ (Good) Party and the Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) withdrew from the parliamentary inquiry committee on violence against women after Turkey pulled out of the İstanbul Convention, a Council of Europe treaty for combating violence against women.

Committees

Forty-four of the bills that were submitted to parliamentary committees published as committee reports, 32 of which were later enacted by the General Assembly.

Twelve reports are pending to be discussed in the next parliamentary session, which is due to start on October 1.

The most active committee was the Committee on Foreign Affairs, which prepared 22 reports, including 20 about international conventions. The Committees of Planning and Budget, Trade, Energy and Natural Resources, Information and Technology and Tourism were also among the most active committees.

"Concrete data regarding the fourth legislative session shows the Assembly cannot use the instruments of checks and legislation and regulations that concern the entire society are enacted amid political debates squeezed in a narrow framework," the report concluded. (HA/VK)