The Framework Law (2): Will It Contribute to Social Peace?

To answer the question in the title, it is worth first looking at the law’s three structural gaps.

The first gap concerns verification. Whether the law has legal effect depends on findings by the security institutions and a decision of the National Security Council (MGK). The record of weapons handed over under Article 8 and the documentation of the moment of handover do not by themselves prove that the organisational structure has actually ended.

Judicial review under the law is limited to individual deferral decisions concerning specific persons. In these decisions a prosecutor, a court or a judge responsible for the enforcement of sentences is involved and there is a right of appeal. The collective finding that weapons have been laid down and that the organisation has ceased to exist, however, falls outside this review. As a result, there is no independent verification record outside the security bureaucracy that the public can trust.

The second gap concerns victims. There is no defined route to truth, participation or compensation for those who lost relatives in the conflict, the families of civilian victims or those who were forcibly displaced. The only behavioural condition for impunity is not committing a new terrorist offence during a set period. The text does not regulate any requirement to disclose the truth or accept individual responsibility.

A victim-centred arrangement would have tied the legal benefit given to perpetrators to something in return. The person benefiting from impunity would explain what happened and accept their own responsibility. The current law asks nothing of this person to shed light on the past.

The third gap concerns accountability. Against the executive-dominated Board under Article 7, the parliamentary Monitoring Commission has only advisory powers. The Board can ask the courts to lift the deprivation of rights after two years for five-year deferrals and after three years for ten-year deferrals. The final decision rests with the judiciary. Article 10, meanwhile, states that officials shall incur no civil, administrative or criminal liability for acts performed in the course of their duties.

The fact that the final decision rests with the judiciary does not resolve the vagueness of the Board’s criteria or the limits of the protection under Article 10. The text does not explain how the phrase “in the course of their duties” would apply in a possible abuse of authority, or which specific mechanism a directly affected victim could turn to.

These criticisms were also recorded in the parliamentary debates. The İYİ Party objected to all Board members being appointed by the President, to the immunity under Article 10 and to the perpetrator-focused structure. Lawyer Afşin Hatipoğlu also argued that a law tailored to a single organisation creates a privileged class and erodes the principles of generality and equality of laws.

Verification is carried out by the executive, the process is run by an executive-dominated Board and those implementing it are protected by an immunity clause. Victims have no defined institutional place in this order; while a legal benefit is granted, the requirements of oversight, truth and compensation are ignored.

Similar arrangements in the past show the consequences these shortcomings can produce.

When Safeguards Are Missing, Society Pays the Price

Although countries and outcomes differ in places, the shared warning is clear: if the legal benefit granted to an armed actor is not limited by independent verification, victims’ rights and political reform, it can create a new order of injustice and chaos.

In Sierra Leone, the 1999 Lomé agreement brought an unconditional general amnesty and gave the leader of the RUF (Revolutionary United Front), Sankoh, a ministerial post, while the RUF continued its violence. The UN-backed Special Court set up later did not regard the amnesty as a bar to prosecution. The state had handed out legal and political rewards without verifying the outcome of disarmament. The concession did not stop the violence and strengthened the armed actor’s position.

Colombia’s 2005 Justice and Peace Law produced a different kind of injustice. The reduced sentences given to paramilitaries did not match the scale of the crimes, trials dragged on and victims struggled to access the files. A large share of the paramilitaries turned into criminal gangs known as BACRIM. In the same period, social opposition was criminalised.

Colombia made the same mistake a second time, this time with a good design. In 2016, to end half a century of conflict, the state signed a comprehensive peace agreement with the FARC guerrillas. On paper there was UN verification, a special jurisdiction and victims’ rights. But the promised rural reform was not carried out. Thousands of former FARC members took up arms again; more than four hundred former combatants and hundreds of social leaders were killed. However well a law may be drafted, peace cannot fully take hold on the ground without the necessary political steps.

Northern Ireland shows that even a process regarded as successful cannot fully resolve the grievances of victims. As part of the peace agreement, around 400 prisoners were released. The families of victims never accepted this. In 2014 it emerged that the state had secretly given some former IRA members letters assuring them they were “not wanted”, sparking a new scandal. A 2023 law granting immunity from prosecution for past offences was taken to the ECtHR (European Court of Human Rights) by victims. Even in a relatively successful process, victims’ objections continue a quarter of a century later.

The Framework Law has not yet been implemented. Even so, the institutional choices in the text can already be seen: there is no independent verification, victims are given no clearly defined right, and democratisation is not tied to a binding timetable. Three shortcomings that had grave consequences in past examples come together in a single text in Turkey. Of course it matters that the guns fall silent. But for lasting peace, the law must also apply to everyone, at the same time and equally. Otherwise the conflict is not resolved but merely kept under control, and justice is postponed indefinitely.

Leniency for Armed Actors, Punishment for the Unarmed Opposition

The “Report of the Commission on National Solidarity, Brotherhood and Democracy”, prepared before the bill, contained proposals that went beyond disarmament.

Its section on democratisation included full compliance with ECtHR and Constitutional Court rulings, not treating non-violent acts as terrorist offences, and having the municipal council elect a replacement when a mayor is removed from office. The 12-article text that was adopted did not turn this democratisation package into law. AKP group chair Abdullah Güler said the main source of the bill was Section 6 of the Commission report on disarmament. While the provisions governing the legal status of the armed actor entered the binding text, the proposals in Section 7 of the report on the rule of law and democratisation remained recommendations.

The explanatory memorandum describes the arrangement as a “first step” and says new laws may be passed in future. This promise sets no binding timetable or guarantee for later democratisation steps. While parliament legislated leniency for the armed actor, it left rule-of-law reforms to an uncertain date. This must be what is meant by selective justice.

The victims of emergency decrees (KHK), the appointment of state trustees in place of elected mayors, CHP-run municipalities and party politicians, political prisoners, jailed journalists and judicial pressure on the “New Party” form the context of this debate on equality.

Unfortunately, this arrangement in Turkey recalls the example of Chechnya. Turkey and Chechnya are of course not the same case, but the comparison matters for seeing what outcomes amnesties can produce. Russia’s amnesties of 2003 and 2006 tied armed actors into the system through the Kadyrov administration. But instead of democratic reforms to widen civic space, authoritarian consolidation was strengthened through Kadyrov and the space for civilian opposition was closed. The conflict was brought under control, but society did not become democratic and power was concentrated in an even narrower centre. In Turkey too, the longer democratisation is delayed, the greater a similar institutional risk becomes. Law made for peace turns into an order that consolidates the power of the government.

Support from the opposition does not reduce the primary responsibility of the government that drafted and passed the text. The main votes in the party breakdown were as follows: 268 MPs from the AKP, 44 from the MHP group, 55 from the DEM Party group and 29 from the CHP voted in favour. The CHP also recorded 2 votes against and 14 not voting. 29 MPs from the İYİ Party voted against. In the New Party, 35 MPs voted in favour, 54 voted against and 2 did not take part in the vote.

Broad support in the vote does not remove the real problem. The law grants a legal benefit to a single group and contains no mechanism to extend it to society as a whole. And that is exactly what needs to be questioned: why did the opposition not make its support conditional on a guarantee that the scope would be extended to everyone? While CHP municipalities and politicians are under pressure, 29 votes in favour came from the CHP and 35 from the New Party, which is itself under continuing judicial pressure; the DEM Party, whose own voters are under legal pressure, did not withhold its support either. Support given without any such condition, as justice was reduced to a single group, once again legitimised the selective order. In this way the opposition parties, too, once again shared political responsibility for this order.

Peace Cannot Be Left to the Discretion of the Executive

I, too, support the laying down of arms. My objection is to tying peace to the discretion of the executive and to selective law. Lasting peace requires shared, equal and verifiable rules.

The first need is to create an independent monitoring mechanism, trusted by the parties and by society, to verify that weapons have been handed over and that the organisational structure has ended. This could be undertaken by an international body or a credible domestic structure. The decisive criterion is independence from the executive.

The second need is victim-centred transitional justice that regulates the contribution of those benefiting from deferral to uncovering the truth, their individual responsibility and victims’ right to compensation. Peace must not become a bargain that asks victims to stay silent.

The third need is to give the Commission report’s proposals on the rule of law and democratisation a binding timetable. Unless the leniency granted to the armed actor is complemented by reforms that widen unarmed political space, the suspicion of selective justice will not go away.

These three safeguards might slow the process down, but speed should not be the only measure of the law of peace. Verification that society cannot trust, a law in which victims cannot find themselves and a promise of democratisation without a timetable cannot establish long-term legitimacy.

Without these safeguards, the Framework Law cannot be considered a lasting peace order. The current text concentrates the power to manage disarmament and set the limits of impunity in the executive, while leaving the timetable for democratisation to the government’s discretion. In the end, rather than securing peace, this structure does little more than consolidate the power of the executive.