HDP nominates female MP for Turkish parliament speaker
“Our parliamentarian from Izmir Serpil Kemalbay is the only female candidate for the speaker of parliament. We want the parliament, the country, and the cities to be run by women,” the HDP said in a tweet on Friday.
Kemalbay served as the co-chair of the HDP in 2017 and will challenge her rival Mustafa Setntop from the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP).
If approved Kemalbay will replace her predecessor and former Prime Minister Binali Yildirim who quit his post last week.
Women’s rights has been one of the corner stones of HDP’s manifesto.
Yildirim resigned from his position as the speaker of parliament on February 19 to run as the AKP’s candidate for the mayor of Istanbul in the upcoming municipal elections set for March 31.
The HDP has 67 MPs in the 600-seat legislature while its rival, AKP has 295 seats.
This is the second time the HDP nominates a woman for the position of the speaker of the Turkish parliament. The vote on a new speaker is expected on Sunday.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan gained sweeping powers last year under a new system and with the help of Nationalist Movement Party (MHP).
The two parties nominated a Yildirim for the speaker of parliament who was challenged by HDP’s Meral Danis Bestas.
Yildirim won the position by sweeping up 335 votes against Bestas’s 65.
The AKP has held the position of the speaker of parliament since the party came to power in 2002.
President Erdogan is increasingly consolidating his grip on power, shrinking “the space for dissenting or alternative views” according to a 2018 report by Amnesty International.
Dozens of HDP parliamentarians have been incarcerated in recent years in Turkey.