Can Atalay sends a letter from prison to Parliament: 'You want people to forget'

Workers' Party of Turkey (TİP) MP Ahmet Şık, during the Parliament General Assembly where budget negotiations are ongoing, took the floor on behalf of Can Atalay, whose parliamentary membership was revoked despite a Constitutional Court ruling, and read the letter Atalay wrote from Silivri Prison. 

'I AM ADDRESSING YOU FROM SILIVRI PRISON'

Atalay began his letter with the following words: "I know you do not want to remember. By ignoring me, you want to forget and make others forget in prison. Despite this, as a deputy elected by the votes of the people of Hatay, who is no different from any of you, I am addressing you from Silivri Prison.

I would have liked to address you as 'distinguished representatives of an institution primarily authorized and tasked with protecting the Constitution.' However, my situation does not allow for this; please excuse me." 

'PARLIAMENT, INSTEAD OF DOING ITS DUTY, BOWED TO THE DE FACTO SITUATION'

Atalay, who posed the questions to the General Assembly, "Is there currently a valid Constitution in this country that serves as the basis for every kind of decision and action, including the budget you are discussing? Is the country being governed according to a Constitution? While you are concerned with how much of the budget is allocated to which institution, how much interest and attention is being paid to the trampling of the Constitution?" continued his letter as follows: "The Constitutional Court ruled on February 22 regarding my parliamentary membership that 'a de facto situation was created by reading a document that has no place in Turkish law in the general assembly.' I will not repeat the rulings that the Court has made many times before but which you have chosen to ignore. Because Parliament, which is tasked with protecting the Constitution, instead of doing its duty, bowed to the de facto situation. This is the situation. It is clear enough not to require interpretation. Those who caused this situation are so aware that their unlawful actions cannot be defended that they found the solution in pretending that what exists does not exist. They took refuge in lawless, inconceivable justifications. By disregarding the Constitutional Court and treating their own whims as edicts, they have openly suspended the Constitution." 

'I WOULD HAVE LIKED TO SHOUT OUT THE PAIN THIS ORDER HAS CREATED IN SOMA, KINIK, AND SAVAŞTEPE'

Atalay continued in his letter:

"If I could have participated in the parliamentary work, I would have liked to make more detailed, concrete speeches based on the social realities I am involved in. For example, I would have had quite a lot to say about the practices of the 'Ministry of Environment and Urbanization' or the 'Ministry of Culture and Tourism.' I would have liked to explain how public resources were plundered, how resources were transferred to cronies, and how a handful of people added wealth to their wealth, based on cases I can list firsthand and followed as a lawyer, such as Gezi, Taksim Square, Tarlabaşı, Sulukule, Validebağ Grove, Emek Cinema, Galataport, and the Northern Forests. While 'privatization' policies were being defended, I would have liked to remind you of the consequences of marketization, for example, the Çorlu Train Massacre where we lost 25 of our people. I would have liked to shout into the faces of the Minister of Energy and the Minister of Labor about the pain that this order, which prioritizes money over the lives of workers, has created in Soma, Kınık, and Savaştepe.

The Ministry of National Education is chasing after municipal daycare centers while there are thousands of uninspected religious community dormitories. I was the lawyer for the children who burned in a dormitory in Aladağ. Through this file and many others, I would have liked to expose again and again the terrible system they have established to undermine secularism and to hand children over to sects and religious communities."

'IS THERE A BUDGET YOU HAVE ALLOCATED SO THAT OUR CITIZENS DO NOT DIE?'

Millions of citizens are longing for days when they receive a wage they can live on humanely, when education and health services are seen as a right rather than a commodity, when dying while working is not normalized, when their natural assets are protected, and when poverty is overcome…

Well, I would have liked to ask; is there a budget you have allocated so that our citizens do not die, are not killed, and live humanely? For instance, so that children can have at least one healthy meal in schools? For the freedom of women? For a health system where they cannot reach out to newborn babies for money? For the people of a city, Hatay, which was destroyed by the February 6 earthquake and is trying to recover?

NO! NO! NO!

But know that we will continue to struggle and resist to make it happen! No matter what you do, we will not abandon this country or its people to the hands of those whose only sacred thing is money."