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ANKARA (AFP) - Turkish Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit tried Wednesday to persuade President Ahmet Necdet Sezer once again to sign a controversial decree aimed at firing public employees with radical Islamic or separatist views. "I had previously informed the president of the urgency of this decree, I briefly stressed these points again," Ecevit told reporters after meeting Sezer here. The document, which bypasses parliament, enables the expulsion of civil servants from public service for life on the basis of reports by state inspectors that they are linked to subversive Islamist or separatist Kurdish movements. Last Tuesday, Sezer refused to approve the document and returned it to the government on the grounds that a parliament-approved law under the constitution should enforce disciplinary sanctions. The government on Monday sent the document back to the president without any changes along with 15-page note explaining the grounds for the decree and recalling that Sezer does not have the right to reject it for a second time. "The president has not yet completed his evaluation of the note we attached to the decree. He will inform both the public and the cabinet once he makes a decision," Ecevit said Wednesday, refusing to give further details of the meeting. Under Turkish law, the president can delay his decision as much as he likes. But the government's time for issuing a decree on the subject is limited by a parliamentary authorization bill, which will expire at the end of December. Ecevit insists that the decree be passed as soon as possible because subversive and separatist movements have begun to gain strength in state offices. If Sezer approves the document, he can still appeal to the constitutional court for the cancellation of the decree. The decree has been harshly criticized by human rights groups, trade unions, bar associations, the press and Turkey's pro-Islamic Virtue Party on the grounds that it violates basic human and labor rights. The decree comes as part of a massive crackdown carried out by Turkish officials since 1997 to eliminate political Islam, which the country's powerful army deems the major threat to the country's secular order. |
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