HDP Group Deputy Chair Saruhan Oluç held a press conference in Parliament. He opened his remarks by saying that "this press conference will have only one item on the agenda. That is about the developments regarding the constitutional amendment. As you know, there is a constitutional amendment proposal submitted by the People's Alliance to the Parliament. We have explained our position on the issue of non-discrimination, rights and freedoms as a whole in our previous statement. We have emphasized our principled attitude that it should be approached as a matter of principle. We said that in a process where there are so many usurpation of rights, discrimination, inequality and unlawfulness, and freedoms and democracy are under heavy attack, the proposal to change only the headscarf would be insufficient to find a solution to the problem of freedoms in Turkey."

'Electoral move'

Oluç said: "We did not have a problem with the headscarf in the past, and we don’t have it today. We have deputies wearing headscarves in our Parliamentary Group since 2015. But we say that in an environment where all citizens, especially Kurds, Alevis, and different beliefs and identities, do not have equal citizenship rights, comprehensive arrangements should be made to meet these social demands. We said that a change to be made only on the headscarf issue and the family institution reminds us of an election manoeuvre of the ruling bloc before the upcoming elections rather than anything else.

'We didn’t accept the request for appointment by the AKP’

The AKP requested an appointment from us for Wednesday to discuss the constitutional amendment proposal. We discussed this demand both in our group and in our party direction. We evaluated this request with our board and co-chairs. Our stance is as follows: the closure case is a revenge case against the HDP. We decided not to talk to the AKP about the constitutional amendment proposal. Of course, we do not see the AKP Group executive's efforts for dialogue as negative. However, we think that such a meeting ground has disappeared due to the policies of the government towards us."