Turkish parliament elects speaker as boycott continues

Turkey's parliament elected a new speaker Monday as the opposition maintained a boycott over jailed lawmakers after Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan dismissed calls for reconciliation. Cemil Cicek, a senior member of Erdogan's Islamist-rooted Justice and Development Party (AKP), was elected speaker in the third round of voting with support from 322 deputies in the AKP-dominated 550-seat parliament. Members of the main opposition Republican People's Party (CHP) were present in the general assembly but were unable to vote, having refused to take the oath since the new parliament started work last week. Lawmakers from a Kurdish-backed bloc did not show up at all. The two groups are protesting court rulings in the wake of June 12 polls that refused to free eight of their colleagues who were elected while in jail awaiting trial for alleged anti-government plots or links to Kurdish rebels. Adding to the controversy, the electoral board stripped one of them, a prominent Kurd, of his parliamentary seat and handed it to the AKP, adding to the party's already solid majority. Brushing aside appeals for legal changes to end the deadlock, Erdogan angrily slammed the boycott, saying the opposition itself was to blame for fielding candidates in prison. "We reject the minority's dominance over the majority ... You will see, they will eat their words," he said Sunday. The AKP holds 327 parliamentary seats while the CHP has 135 and the Kurdish bloc 35. CHP leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu insisted Monday the party's MPs would refuse to be sworn in until two jailed colleagues are freed. The CHP pair, a popular journalist and a renowned academic, have been in prison for more than two years in a massive probe of alleged plots to discredit and oust the AKP. Dozens of suspects remain in prison and prosecutors are yet to secure convictions in the case, alleged to be part of a government-sponsored campaign to bully AKP opponents. The release of the detained lawmakers was sought on the grounds that they do not pose a flight risk, in line with a 2007 precedent when a Kurdish activist elected while in jail walked free as her trial continued. Raising the prospect of fresh unrest in the mainly Kurdish southeast, the Kurdish bloc, which has five of members in jail, has said its MPs will boycott parliament, instead meeting in the regional capital Diyarbakir until the problem is resolved. The third opposition force, the Nationalist Action Party, takes part in parliamentary work even though one of its 52 deputies also remains in prison.