BRAWLING IN THE TBMM

"Politics is perhaps the only profession for which no preparation is thought necessary."
~ Robert Louis Stevenson.

Turkish "democracy" descended to a brawl yesterday in the Turkish parliament over constitutional changes that President Sezer had previously vetoed, with details from Zaman:

But a scuffle, in which about a dozen legislators were involved, broke out when independent deputy Ümmet Kandoğan accused Sezer of harboring “hatred” against Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. He displayed a newspaper photo showing Erdoğan and Sezer sitting next to each other during a military exercise in the Aegean province of İzmir on Friday, during which they did not exchange a single word.

Here are independent deputy Ümmet Kandoğan's words:

“The justification for his veto shows signs of fear, worry, panic, contradiction and false expectations. The reason he is afraid is that when the president is elected by ordinary citizens, some groups will lose their influence in the presidential election process. They claim the regime will be in trouble. They should explain what kind of trouble this will be. He [Sezer] says that the president should represent the nation. With this photo, I want to ask whether he himself represents the nation. Look at his hatred toward the prime minister,” he said.

The Zaman report continues:

Then, a fight broke out when Republican People’s Party (CHP) deputies protested him, shouting and arguing that this amounted to an insult to the head of state. Blows were exchanged between the opposition and ruling party members. Parliament adjourned proceedings briefly, after which CHP parliamentary group deputy chairman Ali Topuz said, “The speaker who insulted the president must immediately apologize and withdraw his remarks, or they must be stricken from the minutes.”

The state-run TRT station stopped its live broadcast from the assembly after the scuffle broke out.

Although TRT ended it's live broadcast, it didn't do so quickly enough because the fight is all over Youtube, and here's a sampling: