The constitution marathon that started in January and progressed with twelve meetings in eleven cities will end this Saturday in Istanbul.

ANKARA - The thirteenth meeting of the “Turkey Speaks: Citizens’ Assembly” series will be held in Istanbul on Saturday, April 28, 2012. This will be the last meeting of the series is presented by the Constitution Platform Initiative Group, made up of thirteen professional organizations and trade unions.

The first meeting of the Constitution Platform –Turkey Speaks Citizens’ Assembly series was held on Sunday, January 8, 2012 in Ankara, followed by the meetings in Konya, Edirne, Diyarbakir, Izmir, Antalya, Samsun, Bursa, Trabzon, Gaziantep and Erzurum. Also, a special meeting was held in Ankara with the participation of women on the International Women’s Day, Thursday, March 8, 2012 and in Samsun on March 25, 2012 with the participation of the youth.

The meetings that hosted hundreds of citizens started with opening remarks by TOBB President M. Rifat Hisarcıklıoğlu and Parliament Speaker Cemil Çiçek. The opening ceremony was attended by professional organizations, union confederations and civil society organizations as well as Constitutional Committee member MPs.

What’s next?

The meetings are expected to contribute to the establishment of consensus within the Turkish National Assembly. At the end of the citizens’ assembly series, preferences, expectations, hopes and concerns of the people about the new constitution will be drafted as a report individually for each provincial assembly. Also, the common and distinctive features of the discussions in each provincial assembly meeting will be analyzed in a technical report within a constitutional framework.

Reports will be submitted to the Constitution Committee of the Turkish National Assembly and simultaneously to the public opinion via the websites of the Constitution Platform and TEPAV, which carries out the secretariat of the assembly meetings. Visitors from the public and from the “Constitution Volunteers” who participated in citizens’ assembly meetings will be able to leave comments.