The speaker’s office of the Turkish parliament has denied having in its archives a parliamentary inquiry report on a 2016 attempted coup that was said to have been submitted in July 2017, the Gazete Duvar news website reported on Wednesday.
In response to a written question by opposition deputy Özgür Özel, Deputy Speaker Süreyya Sadi Bilgiç said the speaker’s office had not received such a report and that an earlier one prepared during the 26th legislative session [November 2015-June 2018] was not published by the speaker’s office as it was not finalized within the session.
In July 2017 a parliamentary inquiry committee led by ruling party deputy Reşat Petek and tasked with examining the coup attempt submitted its findings to then-Speaker İsmail Kahraman, according to the state-run Anadolu news agency.
Kahraman had said the report was aimed at shedding light on the coup attempt, and Petek had claimed that the report would allow the archiving of a remarkable set of documents and that its translation into foreign languages would be greatly beneficial for the country.
Parliament’s official website acknowledges the establishment of the committee of inquiry but says the committee has not submitted its report.
Parliamentary bylaws stipulate that the report be published by the speaker’s office once it has been submitted and distributed to members to be discussed in the general assembly within no more than seven days.
