Ruling, main opposition agree despite minister’s objection

ANKARA

Justice and Development Party (AKP) and Republican People’s Party (CHP) lawmakers have agreed on specifying the education backgrounds of mediators, ruling that they all have to be law graduates, despite Justice Minister Bekir Bozdağ's objection.

Bozdağ told AKP members in the parliamentary justice commission that “the move was wrong,” and called on the lawmakers to change their stance. He criticized the lawmakers for being biased in favor of their professions.
The CHP initiated the resolution to the commission which proposed that mediators should only be law graduates.

Turkey’s Bar Association Representative Ekim Ergen argued that the documents organized by mediators stand in lieu of court orders and so should only be made by law graduates. He added that there were sufficient numbers of lawyers in Turkey, with 65,000 law students and nearly 95,000 lawyers, meaning the aforementioned authority should not be given to engineers.  

The resolution received the support of lawyer members of the commission, including an AKP lawmaker from the Central Anatolian province of Nevşehir, Murat Göktürk, who said he agreed with the bar representative’s words.

Bozdağ instead said there would be new opportunities for law graduates and that around 1,500 of them would be employed and allocated to new jobs created solely for law graduates. 

Voting started after Bozdağ’s remarks and received votes from CHP and AKP members.