Parliamentary Immunity and the Issues Encountered in Turkey

Abstract

Parliamentary immunity is the totality of the assurances provided to members of parliament (MPs) for the purpose of public interest. It originates from British parliamentary law. Parliamentary immunity aims to ensure that MPs can perform their legislative duty independently, without being pressurised. In Turkey, parliamentary immunity has been under constitutional protection since 1876, when the constitutional order began. It can be said that Turkey has two fundamental chronic problems when it comes to this matter. First, inviolability is misused to protect MPs against allegations of corruption. Second, there are no objective criteria regarding the lifting of inviolability. This situation provides ruling parties having parliamentary majority with a wide discretionary power and creates a tool for putting political pressure on the deputies of opposition parties. Besides this, the constitutional amendment made in 2016 has brought about many problems and caused the political sphere and freedom of speech to be diminished.