News / Turkey

Turkey rejects plan to drop secular rule

Tuesday, 26 April 2016 11:03 AM [ Last Update: Tuesday, 26 April 2016 11:20 AM ]

Speaker of Turkish parliament Ismail Kahraman ©AFP

Turkey’s parliament speaker says the country should have a religious constitution and drop secularism from its new charter, prompting an official to dismiss the idea.

"As a Muslim country, why should we be in a situation where we are in retreat from religion?" Ismail Kahraman said in a speech late on Monday.

"For one thing, the new constitution should not have secularism," he said, adding “We are a Muslim country. As a consequence, we must have a religious constitution.”

Head of the constitutional commission on Tuesday rejected the proposal, saying the draft constitution retains secularism and the ruling AK Party has not discussed removing it.

Police later fired tear gas to disperse demonstrators who had gathered outside parliament to protest the call for the country to adopt a religious constitution.

A few protesters were reportedly detained by police while similar protests were expected in other cities.

The ruling AK Party is pushing to replace the existing constitution, which dates back to the period after a 1980 military coup.

Critics fear a new charter could concentrate too much power in the hands of President Tayyip Erdogan, who wants an executive presidency to replace the current parliamentary system.

The AKP holds 317 of the 550 seats in parliament and would need 330 votes to submit its draft constitution to a referendum.

Turkey amended its original 1924 constitution four years later to drop Islam as the official religion of the state.

The country is overwhelmingly Sunni Muslim. A fifth of its population of 78 million people is estimated to be Alevi, which draws from Shia Islam.

Turkey is also home to about 100,000 Christians and 17,000 Jews.

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