As details of the joint parliamentary commission report on the Kurdish peace process gradually emerge, one document has drawn particular attention: the preliminary report prepared by the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP). At 144 pages, it is the longest of the submitted reports and carries significant weight given the MHP's leading role in the process.
Writing for the Turkish press, historian and scholar Taner Akçam argued that the report reveals deep tensions at the heart of Turkey's political identity. According to Akçam, the MHP report places heavy emphasis on what it calls the "Founding Codes of the Republic," warning that any attempt to question these foundational principles constitutes "treason" and labeling those who persist as "traitors." Akçam noted that this framing is not new — the MHP has championed the concept of "founding codes" since 2020, declaring it central to its political mission ahead of the 2023 elections.
A key flashpoint in the report concerns the connection between the Kurdish question and the Ottoman-era Tanzimat reforms. The MHP argues that linking the Kurdish opening to the Tanzimat period is a "malicious step" designed to undermine the national state and its foundational values. The report explicitly states: "No one has the right to open such a discussion."
Akçam, who has long argued that the regime built between 1918 and 1938 constituted an Apartheid system — a thesis central to one of his books — noted that the MHP report appears to directly target his views. The report declares: "The problem in Turkey is not one of a racist, discriminatory Apartheid state versus oppressed civilian populations."
Despite the MHP's insistence that the founding codes are beyond debate, Akçam pointed to contradictions within the report itself. The document acknowledges that equal citizenship was never fully established following the Republic's founding, attributing this to a lack of "citizenship consciousness" and "democracy culture." Akçam countered that MHP leader Devlet Bahçeli himself has signaled the need for structural change, notably in a March 2025 op-ed in Türkgün newspaper titled "A Call for a New Turkey," which conspicuously avoided the term "Turkish citizen" in favor of inclusive language.
Akçam also highlighted a parallel concern: a court ruling against journalists Arat Dink and Sarkis Seropyan, in which the judiciary declared that genocide claims fall outside the protection of free expression because they threaten Turkey's sovereignty and public order. He warned that similar logic could be applied to suppress debate about the Republic's founding codes.
Invoking the late journalist Hrant Dink, Akçam concluded with a call for compromise, referencing Dink's 1996 essay "April 23.5" — a symbolic reconciliation between April 23, which marks the founding of the Republic, and April 24, the date commemorating the Armenian Genocide. "Perhaps what we need," Akçam wrote, "is a discussion about the meaning of 23.5."
Who is Taner Akçam?
Taner Akçam is a Turkish-born historian and one of the first Turkish academics to publicly acknowledge and extensively research the Armenian Genocide. A former political prisoner in Turkey during the 1970s, he escaped and eventually settled in the United States, where he held a professorship at Clark University in Massachusetts. Akçam has authored numerous books on Ottoman-era mass violence and the founding of the Turkish Republic, including works that characterize the early Republican regime as a form of Apartheid. He is widely regarded as a pioneering — and often controversial — voice in Turkish historiography and continues to write on human rights, minority issues, and Turkish political identity.