Dozens of lawmakers in Ankara brawled during a tempestuous session of the Turkish parliament on Friday, after a ruling party MP struck an opposition colleague who called the government “terrorists.”
Tempers flared as the legislature debated the fate of Serafettin Can Atalay, an opposition lawmaker currently in prison for his alleged role in the 2013 Gezi Park riots. The Hatay province representative was stripped of immunity and expelled in January, but the Constitutional Court overruled that decision earlier this month.
“It’s no surprise that you call Atalay a terrorist,” MP Ahmet Sik of the Turkish Workers’ Party (TIP) said during the session, according to AFP.
“All citizens should know that the biggest terrorists of this country are those seated on those benches,” Sik added, pointing to the legislators from President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP). “The truth always hurts. You have no shame or dignity,” he added.
AKP member Alpay Ozalan, a former footballer, then approached the dais and punched Sik. Dozens of lawmakers then swarmed the dais, either throwing punches or trying to separate the combatants.
The deputy speaker called a 45-minute recess after the brawl. Footage from inside the parliament showed staff cleaning blood stains from the floor afterwards.
Atalay is one of the seven defendants convicted in 2022 of attempting to overthrow the government by organizing protests against replacing an Istanbul park with a shopping mall. Erdogan’s government has claimed they were connected to the “terrorist network” led by exiled cleric Fetullah Gulen, who once supported the AKP before having a falling out with the president.
From Marmara prison in Istanbul, Atalay ran for the seat in the earthquake-stricken Hatay province in the general election last May, becoming one of the three MPs from TIP.
After Türkiye’s supreme court of appeals upheld Atalay’s conviction in January, the parliament moved to strip him of immunity. However, the Constitutional Court ruled on August 1 that his expulsion was “null and void” and violated the Turkish constitution.
The parliament has previously voted in favor of lifting the immunity of opposition politicians – many of them ethnic Kurds – whom the government has accused of maintaining ties to Kurdish groups designated by Ankara as terrorists.