(DW) Ismail Kahraman, head of the parliament in Ankara, has said the country needs an Islamic constitution. He said Turkey was a Muslim nation and there was no place for secularism
“We are a Muslim country. That is why we need a religious constitution,” Kahraman, who belongs to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s AKP party, said on Tuesday. He was speaking at a conference with academics and authors from Islamic countries in Istanbul.
Lamenting the fact that, unlike in other Middle Eastern countries, the word Allah did not appear in the current version of the Turkish Constitution even once, the AKP politician also pointed out that the country’s current constitution was not secular: There were many religious holidays and lessons for students that the document prescribed for Turkey’s citizens.
“Why should we, as a Muslim country, distance ourselves from religion?” Kahraman asked. He said that the French and Irish Constitutions were the only ones that used the word “secularism” other than Turkey, but that each country interpreted the word as it liked.
The ruling party, AKP, distanced itself from Kahraman’s statements. Mustafa Sentop, the head of the AKP’s constitutional committee in parliament, said the speaker was not speaking “on behalf of any party.”
There were also reports of protests in front of the parliament in Ankara. Turkish reporter network 140 Journos posted this video on Twitter: