Grand National Assembly of Turkey

Prime Minister Ahmet Davuto?lu must not remain silent after President Recep Tayyip Erdo?an charged a leading member of his cabinet with ?treason,? main opposition Republican People?s Party?s (CHP) Deputy Parliamentary Group Chair Akif Hamzaçebi said on March 2.

Central Bank Governor Erdem Ba?ç?, who was rumored to have resigned on Thursday, just like Deputy Prime Minister Ali Babacan, spoke to me on the phone in a wry tone of voice. He thanked me for my ?get well soon? wishes and said he was using antibiotics. 

The contentious security package increasing the power of the police and governors is in fact a historic reform to preserve democracy and the rule of law in Turkey, according to Deputy Prime Minister Yalç?n Akdo?an.

The Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) is boasting around that it will enter the upcoming June elections as a political party and produce over 60 deputies, thereby becoming the "king-maker" in the Turkish parliament. For the HDP executives, the ten percent national election threshold is no big problem and the party will definitely get more than that.

Peoples? Democratic Party (HDP) Co-Chair Selahattin Demirta? and HDP Deputy Parliamentary Group Chair Pervin Buldan will be exempt from a rule in the party?s internal regulation that limits deputies to two consecutive terms in parliament.

A spokesperson for the ruling party has said former President Abdullah Gül, one of the founders of the Justice and Development Party (AKP), will not run for parliament in the general elections set for June.

The Turkish Defense Ministry and Defense Minister ?smet Y?lmaz have declared their full support for Chief of General Staff Necdet Özel, who was slammed by Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) leader Devlet Bahçeli for his part in the Feb. 21 "?ah F?rat" overnight military operation into neighboring Syria.

If the ?old Turkey? is identified with the period that precedes the rule of the Justice and Development Party (AKP), when the country was governed by mainstream parties on the center-right and center-left of the political spectrum under military-judicial tutelage, then veteran Kurdish politician Hasip Kaplan would be neither a fan of that period nor of those parties.

Former Miss Turkey Merve Buyuksarac, 26, faces two years in prison for quoting a satirical poem on instagram and “insulting” Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

The poem at issue is called “The Master’s poem” and according to the Turish press satirized the powerful Turkish head of state, while paraphrasing parts of the Turkish national anthem.

Opposition deputies? unprecedented creativity in their ways of objecting to a government-led controversial homeland security bill during ongoing General Assembly-level debates at parliament prevailed late Feb. 24.