“Public Youth Health is Pretext, Aim is to Intervene Lifestyle”

“Limiting the sale and consumption of alcohol has nothing to do with protecting the public health of children and young adults. We are talking about a country where average alcohol consumption per person is only 1.5 liters per year. There is no such practice even in countries where this rate is 200 liters. Their aim is to intervene lifestyles that they don’t want,” Levent Gök, Republican People’s Party (CHP) deputy and member of Parliamentary Commission of Human Rights, told bianet, reacting upon the recently passed bill to limit the sale and consumption of alcohol. 

Gök: AKP’s majority imposition 

Levent Gök said the governing AKP scrambled the bill proposal with 36 articles to the parliament in the afternoon on Thursday and insisted on legislations despite the objection of opposition parties. 

With no time to thoroughly scrutinize the bill provisions, they had to proceed with legislations, Gök continued. He also added that the majority of AKP seats imposed the bill on the rest of the parliament. 

“The negotiations lasted 18 hours. In the beginning they said they were going to negotiate the first 18 articles yesterday and the rest tomorrow. But then they rushed everything into one day. 

“In a manner against human rights, they passed the bill after 18 hours of negotiations in the early morning. 

“AKP’s despotic attitude has been revealed once more in the morning. Our colleagues were attacked and we were subjected to several insults.” 

“Public health of youth is a pretext”

Reminding that AKP scrambled the bill negotiations into the busy legislation schedule of the parliament, Gök suggested that people must see what AKP is trying to realize.  

“AKP is rapidly maintaining its mission to redesign the society and sinisterly impose their own conservative lifestyle in every aspect of life through legislations. 

“They have enlarged the scope of alcohol bans with various regulations. When we look at the bigger picture, all these bans and limitations will start affecting the social life. They have taken very critical decisions. 

“What AKP aims here is to impose its own conservative lifestyle to the rest of Turkey. AKP’s mentality to make people more conservative and affect the social life is on full swing. 

“The average alcohol consumption per person is only 1.5 liters per year in Turkey. There is no such practice even in European countries where this rate is 200 liters. They are claiming that they are protecting children and adolescents. 

“This shows once more how AKP is an intolerant entity. All these account to AKP’s intervention on lifestyles. It is obvious that AKP is not taking these measures to protect the public health of the young.” (EKN/BM)