Türkiye wrapped up the nine days of the Qurban Bayram (Eid al-Adha) holiday that saw millions heading to hometowns or vacation resorts. Politicians, apart from exchanging Eid greetings, spent the holiday resting. This week, they will have plenty of work to deal with, from parliamentary discussions to meetings.

At Parliament, lawmakers will engage in talks over a bill on regulating cryptocurrencies. The bill, which will be discussed at the General Assembly on Tuesday, involves the requirement of permission from the Capital Markets Board (SPK) for the establishment of cryptocurrency asset service providers and introduces prison terms and fines for unauthorized providers. It also calls for prison terms of up to 14 years for cryptocurrency asset provider administrators and staff in cases of embezzlement. It aims to reduce the risks of parties dealing with cryptocurrency assets in Türkiye, similar to international practices. Treasury and Finance Minister Mehmet Şimşek announced earlier this year they had reached the final phase in the technical studies of the legal regulations regarding cryptocurrency assets, seeking to mitigate risks and regulate trading platforms and transactions.

The regulations are expected to bring licensing and operating standards to trading platforms as well as help the country to be taken off an international financial crime watchdog "gray list," he said at the time.

The regulation also aims to involve the Scientific and Technological Research Council of Türkiye (TÜBITAK) in this process to encourage software architecture development for blockchain and related technological tools.

A parliamentary committee will also convene this week to discuss the digital copyright issue. Officials from Google will brief the lawmakers on the issue. News publishers, among Google’s fiercest critics, have long urged governments to ensure online platforms pay fair remuneration for their content. The organizations have been losing ad revenue to online aggregators such as Google and Facebook and have complained for years about the tech companies using stories in search results or other features without payment. Google in 2022 announced it had agreed to pay over 300 publishers in Europe for their news, in its latest effort to comply with a recently introduced European Union copyright law. It struck licensing deals with national, local and specialist news publications in Germany, France, Hungary, Austria, the Netherlands and Ireland.

Parliament may also discuss the 9th Judiciary Package, an omnibus bill to improve the country’s laws. It includes special legislation for those spying or committing other crimes for foreign intelligence services. The Turkish Penal Code’s Article 328 stipulates, "Anyone who obtains information meant to be secret in quality for state security or domestic or foreign political interests for the purposes of political or military espionage will be sentenced to 15 to 20 years in prison." The article, however, does not cover acts like abducting foreign nationals or members of foreign intelligence, following targets in Türkiye or gathering intelligence/documents. The ruling Justice and Development Party’s (AK Party) motion adds a new article to the penal code introducing three to seven years in prison for anyone committing crimes on behalf of foreign intelligence, including abduction and surveillance. The sentence goes up during times of war and if the crime is committed by those serving in war preparations or strategically important units for national security.

The article stipulates that for the crime to occur, the perpetrator must act in line with the strategic interests or instructions of a foreign state or organization and that this foreign organization must not be established in accordance with Turkish law. Prosecutors will be permitted to launch investigations on said charges but they are required to secure the Justice Ministry’s authorization for prosecution during trials.

The package comes at a time of heightened espionage activity in the country. As the Palestinian-Israeli conflict rages on, Türkiye has uncovered several networks operated by Mossad in the country. They are accused of recruiting Turkish nationals and people of other nationalities living in the country to spy on Palestinians, particularly people associated with the resistance group Hamas. Earlier this year, authorities have also discovered several Syrians working for the French intelligence. The proposal has been criticized as an "agency of influence," but the AK Party said the package didn’t include such a change, citing efforts to "combat new types of espionage" for the article. "The nature of espionage has changed in modern times as it now includes crimes committed through different techniques," party officials have said.

Another draft bill expected to be discussed by Parliament in the coming days involves tackling the issue of stray dogs. The bill seeks to facilitate the work to collect aggressive stray dogs, dogs with risk of rabies and sterilization of others. Drawing inspiration from global models, including regulations in the U.K., the proposed legislation incorporates provisions for euthanizing stray dogs if they remain unadopted within a specified timeframe. Under the proposed law, each municipality will be responsible for managing stray dogs within their jurisdiction, shelters will photograph dogs and publish adoption announcements on their websites. With a 30-day waiting period for potential adopters, dogs not adopted within this timeframe will be euthanized using a painless injection method.

The proposed law reflects a broader challenge facing Türkiye, where estimates suggest there are 5 million to 7 million stray dogs. However, the existing shelter capacity is insufficient to accommodate this population, exacerbating the problem.

In response to these concerns, animal rights activists recommend alternative strategies such as targeted castration or sterilization, vaccination and the release of dogs back into their original areas. This approach aims to provide a sustainable solution to the stray dog issue while prioritizing the welfare of animals.

The proposed law in Türkiye mirrors similar legislation in neighboring countries like Romania, where euthanasia of healthy dogs has been permitted since 2013. Critics argue that such measures fail to address the underlying causes of the stray dog problem and may have unintended consequences.

Post-election politics

Also this week, the AK Party will convene its Central Executive Committee meeting. The meeting, which will be chaired by President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, will focus on the reshuffling of the party after the March 31 municipal elections. The party, which dominated all elections in the past 21 years, suffered losses in the local vote. The elections were deemed a rare success for its main rival Republican People’s Party (CHP), which regained some strongholds of the AK Party.

Erdoğan on Wednesday will also address his party’s parliamentary group.

Erdoğan has signaled several "changes" within the party after the elections. In a speech following the vote, Erdoğan has pledged to take steps and address shortcomings that hurt the party’s chances to win more municipal seats.

Media outlets reported on Sunday that the party would replace five chairs of local branches, including two in big cities, in a bid for "renewal" of the party. The locations of branches were not revealed but will most likely be in the constituencies where the party lost seats for the first time in years.

Also on Wednesday, Yalçın Karatepe, CHP’s shadow minister of treasury and finance, will meet Treasury and Finance Minister Mehmet Şimşek, in the latest instance of such meetings.

The "normalization" process between the government and the opposition, which started with the landmark meeting of Erdoğan and CHP leader Özgür Özel following the March 31 elections, moved forward with more meetings. Before the bayram holiday, Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya met his shadow counterpart in the CHP, Murat Bakan.

The shadow Cabinet of the CHP held its first meeting with Environment, Urbanization and Climate Change Minister Mehmet Özhaseki. Özhaseki received the CHP’s deputy chair in charge of local administration Gökan Zeybek and two CHP lawmakers. Separately, Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan received the CHP’s shadow foreign minister, Ilhan Uzgel, who requested the minister inform his party more about the government’s foreign policy and the minister’s diplomatic visits abroad.

The CHP’s shadow ministers are expected to meet other ministers soon.

Erdoğan’s meeting with Özel was a milestone in Turkish politics as the two politicians, often at odds, formally came together for the first time since Özel replaced Erdoğan’s bitter rival Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu as head of Türkiye’s oldest party. The meeting, held in a warm atmosphere, was the product of what Erdoğan called a "softening" approach in Turkish politics, where the CHP outdid the AK Party in several strongholds of the latter.

Earlier this month, Erdoğan visited CHP headquarters where he met Özel, in the first such visit since 2006.

Elsewhere, the Felicity Party (SP) is expected to pick the names who will replace outgoing chair, Temel Karamollaoğlu. The party announced in May that an extraordinary congress would be held on June 30 to elect the successor of the 82-year-old leader. The former mayor, who took the reins in the party in 2016, has cited health reasons for his decision to step down from his post in a statement last week. He said he would endorse any candidate to replace him in the upcoming election. He has also underlined that he would not quit politics.

He will be the third opposition leader to step down since last year’s general elections. After Kılıçdaroğlu, Meral Akşener, head of CHP’s former ally Good Party (IP), stepped down from her post upon the party’s losses at the municipal elections.

The SP won in one district and three towns in the municipal elections, securing eighth place in the list of parties with the highest number of mayoral and municipal assembly seats. The party was founded by Necmettin Erbakan, the political mentor of Erdoğan when the former’s Welfare Party (RP) faced a political ban. Though claiming to adhere to Erbakan’s National Vision ideology most closely, it lagged behind other parties in elections founded by former RP members, such as the AK Party and New Welfare Party (YRP) established by the late Erbakan’s son Fatih Erbakan.

Erdoğan’s July schedule

President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan will start next month with a meeting of AK Party mayors in the party’s Kızılcahamam "camp" where senior officials discussed the party’s future and past this month in a lengthy convention. Erdoğan and mayors will discuss the results of the municipal elections.

After the meeting, Erdoğan will head to Astana, Kazakhstan to attend the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) meeting. There, he is expected to hold bilateral talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin who repeatedly delayed his planned visit to Türkiye. Türkiye obtained the dialogue partner status at the SCO in 2012. In 2022, Erdoğan suggested Türkiye would seek full membership of the Russia and China-led organization. Recently, Türkiye also voiced a desire for improved cooperation with BRICS, which is currently chaired by Russia, as Ankara seeks to diversify its alliances amid frustration over ties with Western allies.

Erdoğan will then head to Azerbaijan for a summit of the Organization of Turkic States (OTS) in Shusha where he will meet host President Ilham Aliyev separately. The OTS includes Azerbaijan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan along with Türkiye and Kazakhstan. Hungary, Turkmenistan and the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC) have observer status in the body. The member states of the OTS, formerly called the Turkic Council, boast a combined population exceeding 170 million, a trade volume of about $1.2 trillion and a gross domestic product (GDP) surpassing $1.5 trillion.

The Turkish president will later head to the United States for NATO leaders’ summit on July 9-11. He is expected to attend bilateral meetings with heads of state, including U.S. President Joe Biden, whose anticipated meeting with Erdoğan at the White House was canceled earlier.

Sabah newspaper reported last week that he will tell the summit in Washington focused on the Ukraine war that allies must find the optimum point to draw both Russia and Ukraine to peace negotiations. As a critical member of the Western security alliance working for the safety of over a billion people, Türkiye is looking to reiterate its support for Ukraine’s territorial integrity and Moscow’s participation in peace talks.

Black Sea littoral state Türkiye has sought to maintain good ties with both Kyiv and Moscow during the war, offering to host peace talks or mediate. Ankara has drawn praise for its unique ability to talk to both sides of the conflict, as well as its initiatives on issues such as the Black Sea grain deal and prisoner exchanges. The now-collapsed grain deal was widely hailed as averting a global food crisis during 2022-2023.

Ankara, which boasts of a balanced diplomacy in the conflict, supports Ukraine's territorial integrity and provides it with military support, but also opposes Western sanctions on Moscow.

Speaking at the Ukraine peace summit in Switzerland earlier this month, Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan warned of "two major risks" as the war goes on: possible spillage of war beyond Ukraine, deepening polarization at global levels and inherent risk of enrolling to weapons of mass destruction.

"It is increasingly becoming a war more than between Russia and Ukraine," he said.