Government pushes ahead with council mergers despite demos
THE government has pushed ahead with its plans to reduce the number of municipalities from 28 to 18 despite angry demonstrations outside Parliament and filibustering by opposition MPs.
Parliament was recalled from its summer recess to debate and vote on a draft Bill to merge a number of councils ahead of local elections in November.
The Bill was passed on Thursday morning by a majority vote of MPs from the ruling coalition parties — the National Unity Party (UBP), the Democrat Party (DP) and the Rebirth Party (YDP) — following a marathon 17-hour session that started on Wednesday.
After the vote, the final version of the Bill and a list and map of the municipal boundary changes were published on the Parliament website.
Among the changes, which are expected to come into effect after the next local elections, are the mergers of Lapta and Alsancak municipalities into a “LaptaAlsancak-Çamlıbel Municipality” and the creation of a “Çatalköy-Esentepe Municpality”.
Alayköy and Gönyeli municipalities will become the “GönyeliAlayköy Municipality”, while Tatlısu Municipality has survived the cull, and will only serve the village of Tatlısu.
President Ersin Tatar, who must give his stamp of approval for the Bill to be published in the Official Gazette and become law, said that it had been passed by Parliament “as a result of a democratic process”.
He said that the changes, once legalised, will pave the way for local government authorities to provide “much more efficient, faster and better quality services” to the people.
However trade unions have said that the debate is far from over, and have vowed to take the matter to the Constitutional Court.
On Wednesday and through the night into Thursday members of the Revolutionary Workers Unions Federation (Dev-İş), the Municipal Workers Union (BES) and a union representing workers from Gazimağusa, held a “general warning strike and protest” outside Parliament.
They requested that the Bill be sent back to a committee to be
discussed again and amended, due to job loss fears, a move supported by the Republican Turkish Party (CTP) MPs. The unions blocked some roads in the capital with municipal vehicles.
During the protest a scuffle broke out when police officers tried to stop the drivers of the vehicles from parking in front of Parliament. The main gate to Parliament was broken during the unrest.
BES chairman Mustafa Yalınkaya and Dev-İş chairman Koral Aşam gave statements to the press during the protest.
Mr Yalınkaya argued that abolishing the legal status of 28 municipalities and creating 18 municipalities “would not come to fruition” because such a move would be in “violation of the Constitution” and because “4,500 municipal employees will be left out in the cold”.
He said that while his union is “not against reform”, reforms were trying to be made “only by maps and numbers”.
Mr Aşam argued that they “could not see how things would get done or what problems would be solved” and that the draft Bill was a “disaster”.
CTP leader Tufan Erhürman, who came out to meet the protesters during a break in parliamentary proceedings, said that if the law is passed “in its current unconstitutional state”, that they will “take the matter to the Constitutional Court”.
Inside Parliament, UBP MP Özdemir Berova said that “statements that municipality workers or personnel will lose their personal rights or be fired” were “wrong and unwarranted”.
During another break in proceedings, Prime Minister Ünal Üstel and Dr Erhürman met to try and reach a compromise, but a compromise could not be reached.
When the session reconvened, the CTP MPs stood at the podium in support of Dr Erhürman — who raised objections to each clause of the draft Bill — after Parliamentary Speaker Zorlu Töre warned that he had exceeded his speaking time.
Dr Erhürman accused the coalition of refusing to re-examine the Bill and of being “willing to destroy the municipalities for the sake of stubbornness”.
“No-one had a problem with putting incorrect things into the Bill, so you shouldn’t have a problem sitting on the committee now to amend them,” he added.