The information note stated, "The seventh year of Roma people representation in the history of the Century of the Republic has dawned, but Roma people problems have not been on the parliamentary agenda." The information note stressed that the Dom, Lom and Abdal identity groups of Roma communities are not represented in parliament and that there are no Roma representatives among those elected from provinces with high Roma population density such as Istanbul, Edirne, Kırklareli, Çanakkale, Hatay, Diyarbakır, Sakarya, Tekirdağ and Artvin.
What happened on GNAT in 2022 regarding the Roma people?
- 114 sessions were held in the Assembly. According to the parliamentary minutes, remarks were made on Roma people in only 19 sessions.
- According to the parliamentary minutes, 11 MPs formed sentences about Roma people.
- 3 of the 1548 parliamentary research motions in the Grand National Assembly of Turkey were about Roma people.
- Of the 20,547 written questions, 53 were directly related to the Roma people. Of the 53 parliamentary questions, 35 had the same content. The written questions to the ministers referred to 19 different contents.
The following were highlighted in the memo:
- The human rights violations faced by Roma people have not been adequately addressed in the Grand National Assembly of Turkey and no concrete steps have been taken to ensure equality.
- The party affiliation of Roma MPs prevented them from taking an active role in Romani rights violations.
- The 2023 budget did not allocate a budget for the Roma Strategy Action Plan.
- No work has been done to combat poverty in the area of widespread and worsening poverty that includes Roma people.
- Roma women with intersecting identities, Roma disabled, Roma children, Roma LGBTI+, Roma youth, Roma Alevis, and Roma Christians were ignored by decision makers.
- In 2022, the Parliament did not take any concrete steps to ensure equal access to human rights for Roma people.
- Nothing was done in Parliament to combat discrimination, hate speech, and Antiziganism. The criminalization of Roma people and Roma neighborhoods was not on the Parliament's agenda.
Selected recommendations
The "Proposals" section of the briefing note suggested that a parliamentary research commission be formed to "study the problems of Roma people in Turkey, combat Antiziganism, and develop social policies for Roma."
Among the proposed topics was the drafting of legislation to combat discrimination and hate speech based on racial, religious, sexual, gender, sectarian, or other identities.