On a scorching day with temperatures floating around 31 degrees Celsius (88 degrees Fahrenheit), lawmakers in Parliament will convene one last time before a summer recess that will end in October. On their agenda is a topic as hot as the Ankara weather: a terror-free Türkiye. Deputies are expected to give overwhelming support to a draft bill that involves the disarmament of the PKK terrorist group and reduced sentencing for nonviolent members of the group.
The passing of the law is a highly critical stage in the "terror-free Türkiye" initiative, which has so far advanced through apparently unilateral moves by the PKK after it announced its dissolution last year.
The Law on Strengthening National Solidarity and Social Integrity was approved on Saturday by Parliament’s Justice Committee after a quarrel in which lawmakers supporting and opposing the bill engaged in harsh verbal arguments.
On Monday, Parliament’s General Assembly will convene to discuss the draft law, roughly five days before the anniversary of the PKK’s first attack in Türkiye in 1984. Since then, the terrorist group has been involved in the killing of tens of thousands of people across the country, as well as troops conducting counterterrorism operations abroad. Türkiye changed its policy toward the PKK over the following decades, though it firmly opposed its existence due to the group’s separatist ambitions.
