The annual budgets for the ‘prime minister’s’ office and public broadcaster BRT passed through the committee stage of the north’s ‘parliament’ on Friday evening.
The pair of committee meetings were the latest in the north’s “budget marathon”, wherein every section of the ‘state’ budget for 2024 is dissected and debated by the ‘parliamentary’ finance committee.
The budget for the ‘prime minister’s’ office stands at 1.08 billion TL (€35.3 million), and was passed by a majority vote in the committee following a scathing assessment by some ‘MPs’ of the performance of ‘prime minister’ Unal Ustel.
Opposition party CTP ‘MP’ Sami Ozuslu opened the debate by criticising Ustel for his recent comments regarding the north’s population, wherein he said he knew how many people live in the north but could not say.
He also turned his attention to the current state of BRT, saying it has “moved away from public broadcasting”.
Meanwhile, fellow CTP ‘MP’ Devrim Barcin questioned why the work of the Religious affairs directorate is being financed by the ‘government’ and not by the Foundations Administration (Evkaf).
To this end, he pointed out that 332 million TL (€1.08m) had been allocated from the ‘prime minister’s’ office’s budget to pay the salaries of Imams next year.
Independent ‘MP’ Aysegul Baybars criticised the fact that despite the ‘government’ including the transfer to a digital ‘state’ platform and a “five-year development plan” in its stated targets, no funds had been allocated in the ‘prime minister’s’ office’s budget for such endeavours.
“You want to prepare a five-year development plan, but if you do not allocate resources for in in the budget, it is just empty words,” she said.
Meanwhile, CTP ‘MP’ Sila Usar Incirli pointed out that the forecast budget deficit of 6.78 billion TL (€221.6m) is dependent on grants being sent from Turkey, and added “if these grants do not arrive on time, the deficit could increase to 20 billion TL (€654m).”
She also called for the opening of more crossing points, given the “contribution of people crossing from the south to the north to the economy.”
In addition, ‘deputy parliament speaker’ Fazilet Ozdenefe criticised the ‘government’ for being “unserious” and said the budget was full of “anomalies”.
Despite opposition ‘MPs’’ reservations, ‘finance minister’ Ozdemir Berova said the “situation was the same” when CTP were last in ‘government’, and the budget was passed through the committee with the votes of ‘MPs’ from the ruling coalition.
Next on the agenda was the budget of public broadcaster BRT, which was set at 1.03 billion TL (€337.5m).
CTP ‘MP’ Incirli spoke again, saying BRT had been transformed into “state media”, and urging for “caution” when making decisions on the future of the institution.
Fellow CTP ‘MP’ Ozuslu said “80 per cent of BRT employees are unhappy and unmotivated,” and added that “the principle of equal pay for equal work is being trampled on at BRT.”
As with all previous stages of the budget so far, it passed through the committee with the votes of ‘MPs’ from the ruling coalition.
Later in the evening, CTP Leader Tufan Erhurman spoke to local media regarding his earlier calls for the ‘parliament speaker’ to resign over irregularities regarding the ‘parliament’s’ budget.
He said, “parliament is actually being run like a kingdom. Legislation is not being complied with. Parliament is the body which makes laws. The body which makes laws is not complying with its own laws.”
Addressing the ‘government’, he said “you are the ones who appoint bureaucrats. You have the parliament speaker, the prime minister, and the president. Why are you not implementing parliamentary legislation?”
He added, “if you do not know that parliament should be governed according to the rule of law, then this parliament is not being governed at all. Parliament has been transformed into a royal court. If you try to manage parliament like this, there will be even more problems.”