Midnight operation in the Turkish Parliament

For Turkish: http://haber.sol.org.tr/sonuncu-kavga/mecliste-gece-yarisi-tmmob-operasyonu-haberi-76112

Summary:

AKP called for a special session of the Parliament at midnight and added a new clause to a package of laws currently being voted on. The new close will abolish the rights of professional associations to take decisions. This is seen as AKP’s revenge on TMMOB (UNION OF CHAMBERS OF TURKISH ENGINEERS AND ARCHITECTS) The union has been active in supporting the Gezi movement.

The clause was accepted by majority vote.

On Monday, many managers of the TMMOB was detained, their offices had frequently been broken into by the police several times over the last month and a half. This time, it is being taken hostage by a midnight operation in the Parliament.

CHP MP Aykut Erdoğdu twited: “AKP has given a pirate proposal to effectively close down the professional associations like TMMOB that it [AKP] sees as rivals. If we don’t stop this law, all professional organisations will be closed down one by one…”.

The hashtag #TMMOBaDokunma [Don’t touch my TMMOB] was number 1 trending hashtag in Turkey as of 1 am [Turkish time]

A facebook user had this to say about this news:

You are your country’s omnipresent, omnipotent, omniscient prime minister and you are pissed at a union of trade chambers for blocking your plans to redevelop a major public square and demolish a park at your own will. The project in question has triggered the largest anti-government demonstrations in your country’s modern history, to which you have responded with generous doses of brutality, animosity and denial. The union, which represents 23 chambers and over 400,000 engineers and architects, has dared to use its legal right to demand a judicial review of the project and managed to procure a court order to have it suspended. You’ve had your police repeatedly raid their offices and finally arrest their representatives, but they have not budged.

Here is how you use your parliamentary majority to put those ungrateful troublemakers in their place: You call for a last minute session at midnight. You present a draft law that increases ministerial supervision over all trade chambers, cuts their income and curtails their ability to review and approve relevant public projects. You throw the draft law in a package of 50+ unrelated revisions lumped together to fast-track legislative change. You read out, vote for and approve the whole thing in a matter of hours.

And then you call it a democracy. We simply call it Turkey.