President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan pledged a brand-new constitution which would ensure his people's freedom and rights in a speech in Ankara that has been introduced as his dream for Turkey in the next 100 years and was widely interpreted as his electioneering policy platform for the upcoming presidential election set on June.
'The shelf life of the constitution of the Sept. 12 drafted after the military coup in 1980 has already expired,' the president stated.
According to the Turkish president, the new constitution will help bolster 'the rule of law, pluralism, and equality,' despite the fact that his progressively autocratic rule has gravely crippled everything else, as evidenced by relevant intergovernmental standings.
Turkey currently ranks 149th out of 180 countries in Reporters Without Borders' 2022 World Press Freedom Index. As per a report, authoritarianism is on the rise in Turkey, while media pluralism is steadily decreasing, as well as all means are being employed to diminish critics.
According to the ANI report, Turkey is placed 124th out of 146 countries in terms of gender inequality inside the World Economic Forum's Global Gender Gap Report this year. Among the chief factors for this is the fact that women earn only 47% of what men earn.
On October 28, Erdogan declared his 'Century of Turkey vision,' claiming that his new envisionment will begin on the hundredth anniversary of the Republic of Turkey next year.
'We want to make the 100th anniversary of our Republic the turning point of a new era that will change politics in Turkey with its style, functioning and results,' Erdogan said.
'Bringing a new constitution as a product of the national will, is one of the first goals of our Century of Turkey vision. We are determined to implement it with the approval of our parliament and the approval of our nation. It is the most fundamental right of our nation, which has paid the price of protecting its homeland for a thousand years, its Republic for a century, its democracy for 80 years, and its independence on July 15, to have such a constitution,” he continued.
Erdogan failed to acknowledge that the 1982 constitution was revised 19 times, and three referendums on changes to the constitution have been kept underneath the governing AKP in 2007, 2010, and 2017.
It is worth noting that opposition parties are overwhelmingly in favor of amending the constitution, though for separate purposes than Erdogan. Six opposition parties agreed to sign a lengthy mutual policy platform last February calling for the abolishment of the executive presidential system as well as the restoration of civil liberties and the rule of law under such a bolstered parliamentary system.
In an article that was published a few months ago, Turkish journalist Murat Yetkin stated that 'Erdogan could face two major problems.'