The Next Citizens’ Assembly will be Held in Erzurum this Weekend The twelfth meeting of the series will be carried out in Erzurum.

ANKARA – The Constitution Platform Citizens’ Assembly that held eleven meetings in twelve provinces so far is close to the end. After the meeting in Gaziantep, Erzurum will discuss the new constitution this Sunday. During the meeting to be carried out on Sunday, 22 April 2012, citizens residing in Erzurum will discuss, raise their demands and views, and vote on the options regarding the new constitution.

The series is presented by the Constitution Platform initiative group, made up of thirteen professional organizations and trade unions. The group, which was started with the slogan “Turkey Speaks” and with the secretariat of TEPAV, so far carried out meetings in Ankara, Konya, Edirne, Diyarbakir, Izmir, Antalya, Samsun, Bursa, Trabzon and finally in Gaziantep. The organization which aims to reach hundreds of participants with each meeting will be the biggest event for deliberative democracy in Turkey.

The framework to be drawn throughout the citizens’ assembly meetings in the scheduled provinces is expected to contribute to the establishment of consensus within the Turkish National Assembly. At the end of the citizens’ assembly series, preferences, expectations, hopes and concerns of the people about the new constitution will be drafted as a report individually for each provincial assembly. Also, the common and distinctive features of the discussions in each provincial assembly meeting will be analyzed in a technical report within a constitutional framework.

Reports will be submitted to the Constitution Committee of the Turkish National Assembly and simultaneously to the public opinion via the websites of the Constitution Platform and TEPAV, which carries out the secretariat of the assembly meetings. Visitors from the public and from the “Constitution Volunteers” who participated in citizens’ assembly meetings will be able to leave comments.

The initiative group makes keen efforts to ensure the impartiality of the meetings. It uses innovative and special methods in both the identification of meeting participants and the organization of the meeting content.