JOINT STATEMENT OF THE LEADERS OF THE SIX POLITICAL PARTIES (Ankara, January 5, 2023)

Joint Statement January 5, 2023

Fellow Compatriots,

We, as the leaders of six political parties, gathered together on January 5, 2023 in the week which marked the beginning of the 100th anniversary of our Republic. We hope that the year 2023 and the second century of our Republic will bring happiness, justice and prosperity to our country and people.

This first meeting of the year also marked the end of the first year of our cooperation as the Table of Six. In this context, our meeting started with a general evaluation of the past year. Conscious of the historical responsibility we have taken on, we hereby underline once more our determination to maintain our cooperation in line with the principles and objectives that we released to the public on February 12, 2022.

This process of cooperation is a first in our political history in the sense that it represents all main political movements in the history of our two-century-old modernization, 150-year-old Parliament, 100-year-old Republic and 75-year-old democracy. Based on this experience and knowledge we have assembled, our main purpose is to eliminate the public damage caused by the Presidential Government System while launching a new era adorning our Republic with a real and mature democratic regime.

In this context, we open-heartedly and constructively evaluated the ground that we have covered in the past year, our achievements and the challenges with which we are faced. First of all, we are pleased to state that this process of cooperation is leading a psychological transformation process in the political climate of our country. We have built a new political climate gathering representatives of different opinions and approaches around one table in the face of the efforts of the party in power to sustain oppression on the segments that think different through policies of alienation and polarization.

Based on this new political climate we built, we set forth some reference texts that will serve as a guide in the upcoming critical periods. Six political parties worked day and night to build a common ground and set forth the texts titled Strengthened Parliamentary System Agreement, Basic Principles and Objectives, Election Security, Institutional Reform and the Strengthened Parliamentary System Constitutional Amendment Proposal which are successful indicators of our democratic maturity level.

Intending to maintain its order of authoritarian corruption, the party in power has been resorting to political engineering through restriction of democratic freedoms, polarization, politicization of the judiciary, monopolization of the media while we have exerted efforts to build a new political architecture based on consensus, common sense, political courtesy and inclusive democracy and covered significant ground in this.

Fellow compatriots,

In this framework, we have finalized two more crucial joint texts as part of the concrete steps of our cooperation process. We also established the future steps and our working schedule.

We will organize a joint press conference on January 30 to release to the public the Transition Road Map and the Common Policies Text which we have finalized today.

Along with these two texts, the political cooperation architecture of our parties will have been completed to a great extent.

Having explained before

- the foundation on which our cooperation is built through the Basic Principles and Objectives text,

- the political structure of our cooperation through the Strengthened Parliamentary System Agreement,

- the political guarantee of our cooperation through the Election Security text,

- the legal pillars of our cooperation through the Strengthened Parliamentary System Constitutional Amendment Proposal,

- the institutional infrastructure of our cooperation through the Institutional Reform text,

we will now define our process management mechanisms through our Road Map and our concrete steps in all fields through the Common Policies Text.

Fellow compatriots,

We know that this vision that we have set forth as a result of our one-year-long intensive efforts under difficult political circumstances can only be implemented on two conditions: our joint presidential candidate must be elected and we must obtain the majority in the parliament for a constitutional reform.

In order to fulfill these conditions, we have decided that

- the committee established for election security should work without interruption and focus on measures that will ensure protection for each and every vote in all ballot boxes;

- a joint committee should work on alternatives for parliamentary elections, that will form a basis for the decisions of the party leaders to be able to obtain the constitutional majority in the parliament and present these alternatives to the party leaders;

- negotiations should be launched among the party leaders to agree upon a joint presidential candidate.

We will act based on this very culture of consensus while taking decisions related to the presidential candidate and to parliamentary elections and launch a new era in the executive and legislative branches after the elections.

We have decided to organize meetings among the party leaders more frequently in order to complete these efforts in a short span of time. In this context, the GOOD Party will host our next meeting on January 26.

We would like to take this opportunity to emphasize that our common stance about the early elections discussion that have been on the agenda in recent days is quite clear: We will not support any early election to be held with the electoral system that was put in place last year as part of some political engineering efforts. We are, on the other hand, ready to support an early election to be held with the system that applied in the 2018 elections – that is, to be held before April 6.

Fellow compatriots,

We also touched upon the political and economic issues that are on the agenda.

The mayor of Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality, Mr. Ekrem Imamoğlu was sentenced.

Sentencing of the Mayor of Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality Mr. Ekrem Imamoğlu including a ban from political activity is the very last and striking manifestation of the politicization of the judiciary. We demonstrated our solidarity and our position against the politicization of the judiciary once again in Saraçhane. The fact that Mr. Erdoğan is taking steps to impose the same injustice that he had suffered himself on others now is one of the most tragic examples of his corruption caused by power. We are going to act in solidarity and with determination against similar future efforts of political engineering that would constitute an intervention in the judiciary to shape the process of elections.

We also addressed the matter of headscarves which has been on the agenda in recent months in an extremely open-hearted environment of discussion. We are in full agreement on providing a legal guarantee that will prevent this outdated ban that ruined the lives of millions of women—a product of the pro-coup mindset of September 12 and the pro-guardianship mindset of February 28—from ever resurfacing.

We are, however, as a matter of principle, against this mindset that considers this matter of human rights and freedom of belief and the symbol of headscarf as an “assist to score”. This definition is an insult to women that suffered heavy injustices because of the ban on headscarves and a clear indication that Mr. Erdoğan sees this matter as a leverage for elections. If the party in power is sincere, it must approach the regulatory proposals of the opposition on this matter without prejudice and support the drafting of the necessary texts based on consensus.

We also touched upon the latest developments in economy during our meeting. Having severed all links with reason, science and rationality and ignored the principle of independence of the Central Bank, the party in power brought shame on our country by attaining the 7th highest inflation rates in the world and the highest in Europe. The Turkish Statistical Institute’s inflation calculations have no consistency whatsoever with the reality or with independent calculations. Basing wage and salary increases on TSI’s data means usurping the rights of our people. The fact that the party in power considers the new minimum wage which will have fallen below the poverty line by the end of this month before workers even receive it as a source of pride is tragic to say the least.

Faced with the fact that they will lose the elections, the party in power demonstrated their frivolousness and indifference in state and budget management once again by changing their newly drafted 2023 budget in panic in less than 24 hours—while the ink on the paper was still wet. In the meanwhile, the government presents the elimination of the retirement age requirement which should already be an incontestable right for employees and the salary increases which mean nothing at all in the face of the melting purchasing power, as good news. This is the most concrete demonstration of the arbitrariness, lawlessness and the collapse in public management brought along by the Presidential Government System.

We also tackled in detail the issue of the disruption in public order manifesting itself more clearly with the murder Sinan Ateş, the former leader of Grey Wolves in broad daylight in Ankara last week. First of all, we would like to offer our condolences to his family and loved ones. What makes this atrocity even more grave is that all relative authorities including the President, Minister of the Interior, Minister of Justice and the Leader of MHP retreated into silence after this homicide. It is not possible to talk about public safety or a democratic state of law in a country where gangs, encouraged by the fact that perpetrators of attacks against politicians, academics and journalists were released without any sentence before, attack everyone who does not think like them and wander the streets freely, and different groups in the mob stage executions against one another.

We will see to it that those who commit these crimes and the power groups behind them receive the sentences that they deserve. No one can take our country back to the darkness of seventies when young people from all segments were sacrificed; to the pro-coup circumstances leading to the September 12 military coup in eighties or to the atmosphere of unsolved murders in nineties.

We are committed to putting up a joint fight until a freedom-based public order and the principle of rule of law are in place in the country, which is the most important motive that has brought us together. In this context, we will intensify our efforts to preserve just and impartial circumstances for elections in the face of the plots to hold elections under extraordinary circumstances to sustain the authoritarian order.

Our Beloved People who anxiously watch these developments,

Do not despair.

Considering politics as a justice and rights-based domain rather than a sharing of power and political gain, we are committed to dissipate the dark clouds on the horizon.

We will not allow anyone to shadow the 100th anniversary of our Republic through corruption, bans, oppression and poverty.

The 100th year anniversary of our Republic will be the year of the beginning of a new journey towards reinstating social peace, human rights and freedoms, justice, a democratic state of law, clean politics and a society of prosperity.