Watch: Turkish parliament turns battlefront after heated discussion over ousted MP – Times of India

Punches flew unabated in the Turkish Parliament on Friday as lawmakers discussed the fate of a jailed opposition leader Can Atalay, whose parliamentary immunity was revoked earlier this year.
However, Turkey’s constitutional court earlier this month struck down Parliament’s decision to oust Atalay from his parliament seat.
The leaders were meeting following the court’s order to determine the future of the leader.
Atalay, who is a lawyer, won his seat last year after having campaigned from his prison cell.
Ahmet Sik, a fellow member of the leftist Workers’ Party of Turkey (TIP), defended Atalay against the attacks on him by ruling party lawmakers.
“It’s no surprise that you call Atalay a terrorist,” he said.
“All citizens should know that the biggest terrorists of this country are those seated on those benches,” he added, indicating the ruling majority, according to news agency Reuters.
Sik’s comment infuriated the ruling party lawmakers, leading to chaos following which the chairman called for a break.

That comment drew angry responses from ruling party lawmakers, prompting the chairman to call a break.
Scuffles broke out after former footballer Alpay Ozalan, a lawmaker from Erdogan’s ruling AKP party, walked to the rostrum and shoved Sik to the ground, said an AFP journalist in parliament.
Sik was then punched on the ground several times by ruling party lawmakers.
At least two opposition MPs were injured during the fistfight.
Legal battle
In January, Atalay was stripped of his parliamentary seat following a heated session, despite efforts by fellow leftist deputies to halt the proceedings.
He is one of seven individuals who were sentenced to 18 years in prison in 2022, following a controversial trial that also resulted in the philanthropist Osman Kavala being jailed for life.
Despite being imprisoned, the 48-year-old Atalay campaigned and was elected as a member of parliament for the earthquake-stricken Hatay province in the May 2023 general election, representing the leftist TIP party, which holds three seats in the parliament.
However, Atalay’s election victory led to a legal confrontation between President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s supporters and opposition leaders, pushing Turkey to the brink of a constitutional crisis last year. The decision to remove Atalay from parliament in January came after the Supreme Court of appeals upheld his conviction, paving the way for his parliamentary immunity to be revoked.
On August 1, the constitutional court, responsible for reviewing the compliance of judges’ rulings with Turkey’s basic law, published its ruling on the case, declaring Atalay’s removal from parliament as “null and void”. This is not the first time that Turkey’s parliament has voted to lift the immunity of opposition politicians, many of whom are Kurds, who the government considers to be “terrorists”.