July 30, 2007

The deputies and executives of the DTP met for three hours in Ankara Sunday.

ANKARA - Twenty newly elected parliamentary deputies have applied to formally joint the pro-Kurdish Democratic Society Party (DTP), submitting petitions to the office of the speaker of the Turkish parliament on Sunday.

The move comes one week after Turkey’s general election, which saw an unprecedented number of independent deputies elected to the new parliament.

The DTP itself did not have candidates run in the election, instead having them stand as independents in an attempt to negate Turkey’s electoral threshold, which requires a party to gain ten percent of the vote nation wide before being able to take up seats in the parliament.

Officials of the DTP will lodge a submission with the office of the speaker on Monday, requesting that the party be able to form a parliamentary group, meaning that its deputies will be eligible to sit as members of parliamentary committees and enjoy benefits such as additional funding and extra office meeting rooms not available to independent deputies.