Turkey's parliament puts Red Crescent's charter under presidential approval as opposition presses for audits

Turkey's parliament on Tuesday, Nov. 10, adopted the fifth article of a new law for the Turkish Red Crescent (Türk Kızılay), the country's largest humanitarian organization. The article says Kızılay's charter, covering everything from its governing bodies to its membership rules and budget practices, will be approved by the president. Lawmakers then opened debate on the bill's final section. That section includes a provision giving Kızılay staff injured or killed in disaster and war zones access to state compensation and pensions, but not its volunteers.

The sitting was the latest step for a bill that has been on the floor for weeks. Opposition deputies used the debate to press three objections. They said the law gives Kızılay and its companies no-tender sales to the state without matching outside audits, and that it leaves volunteers outside the new protection. They also said the organization has not rebuilt public trust since a subsidiary sold tents during the 2023 earthquakes. Deputies from the governing Justice and Development Party (AKP) and its ally, the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), said the law strengthens Turkey's disaster capacity and its humanitarian diplomacy. The sitting ended when the committee responsible for the bill did not take its seats after a recess, and the Assembly adjourned until 2 p.m. on Wednesday, Nov. 11.

This story is based on the parliament's own summary of Tuesday's sitting, the Interior Affairs Committee report on the bill and reports by Anadolu Agency, T24 and the ANKA news agency. It is explained in more detail at the end.

What parliament approved on Tuesday#

Article 5 is short. It says Kızılay's principles, founding purpose, duties, organizational structure and membership rules will be set out in a charter, or tüzük. So will the duties of its governing organs, its budget practices and "other matters as needed." The final sentence reads: "The charter is approved by the President."

Kızılay is legally an association. Today it operates under Turkey's Civil Code and the Associations Law, like thousands of other civic groups. The bill does not change that status, according to its sponsors in the committee report. Article 6, debated on Tuesday but not yet voted on, says the Civil Code and the Associations Law will still apply where the new law is silent.

What changes is who signs off on the rulebook. Under Article 5, the charter that governs Kızılay's internal elections, its board and its budget becomes a document the president approves. The committee report presents this as part of giving Kızılay "a clearer legal basis" for its work, in line with international practice for national Red Cross and Red Crescent societies.

With Article 5 adopted, parliament completed the first of the bill's two sections. The second section, Articles 6 to 9, covers the fallback to general law and amendments to other laws. It also sets the date the law takes effect and names the president as the authority that carries it out.

The bill's road through parliament#

The bill was submitted on May 15, 2026, by Sivas deputy Hakan Aksu and Gümüşhane deputy Celalettin Köse, both of the AKP, with 83 other deputies. It is registered as bill 2/3690. The Grand National Assembly's bill record still listed it as "on the agenda" on Nov. 10.

1. May 15, 2026AKP deputies Hakan Aksu, Celalettin Köse and 83 others submit bill 2/3690
2. June 4, 2026Interior Affairs Committee approves the bill after 5 hours and 17 minutes of debate
3. Nov. 3-4, 2026Plenary adopts Article 4 on no-tender purchases, data sharing and tax exemptions; sitting closes for lack of quorum
4. Nov. 10, 2026Plenary adopts Article 5 on a presidentially approved charter and opens debate on Articles 6-9
5. Nov. 11, 2026Plenary scheduled to resume at 2 p.m.

Source: Grand National Assembly bill record, Interior Affairs Committee report, Anadolu Agency, Grand National Assembly

The Interior Affairs Committee, chaired by former Interior Minister Süleyman Soylu, approved the bill on June 4 after a debate that, according to its report, lasted 5 hours and 17 minutes. Opposition members of the committee attached dissenting opinions to the report.

On the floor, progress has been slow. Article 4, the bill's longest and most contested provision, was adopted in a sitting that ran past midnight into Nov. 4, Anadolu Agency reported. Debate then moved to Article 5. During a vote on an amendment motion filed by the opposition YENİ Parti, deputies called for a quorum count. Two counts failed to find enough members, and the deputy speaker, Celal Adan, closed the sitting. Murat Çan, a YENİ Parti deputy from Samsun, said on Tuesday that the law had been before parliament for more than 50 days without being passed, T24 reported.

The governing alliance has the numbers to pass the bill when its members attend. The AKP holds 281 seats and the MHP 46, a combined 327 of the 592 members now sitting, according to the Grand National Assembly's seat count. Turkey's parliament has 600 seats, but eight are currently vacant.

AKP

281

YENİ Parti

90

DEM Party

56

MHP

46

CHP

44

İYİ Party

26

Yeni Yol

20

Independents

12

HÜDA PAR

4

Yeniden Refah

3

TİP

3

DBP

2

EMEP

2

Three one-seat parties

3

Source: Grand National Assembly seat distribution

Show the numbers

Party	Seats
AKP	281
YENİ Parti	90
DEM Party	56
MHP	46
CHP	44
İYİ Party	26
Yeni Yol	20
Independents	12
HÜDA PAR	4
Yeniden Refah	3
TİP	3
DBP	2
EMEP	2
Three one-seat parties	3

The plenary's crowded autumn has also included debate on a defense pact with Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. Next on the list after the Kızılay law is a bill to license foreign booking platforms such as Booking.com, according to the Assembly's weekly agenda.

The no-tender clause at the center of the dispute#

Most of Tuesday's criticism was aimed at Article 4, adopted the week before. It lets public bodies buy first-aid services, disaster logistics services and temporary-shelter products and services directly from Kızılay without a tender. The exemption covers only products and services that Kızılay itself, or companies in which it holds more than half the capital, produce. Such purchases are classed as "strategic purchases" and are carried out outside Turkey's Public Procurement Law, according to the Assembly's account of the adopted article and Anadolu Agency.

The text says such purchases must follow principles of "transparency, competition, equal treatment, public oversight" and efficient use of resources. They are to be made under protocols between Kızılay and the relevant ministry, taking into account the scale and urgency of a disaster. An amendment from the AKP adopted on the floor added a condition for national-scale disasters such as fires, floods and earthquakes. In those cases, Kızılay and its majority-owned companies may deliver their own first-aid, logistics and shelter products to private individuals and private legal entities only "with the knowledge of" Kızılay's headquarters board.

Article 4 also:

• lets public bodies allocate movable property, other than official vehicles, to Kızılay and transfer machinery and equipment to it free of charge "in the public interest";
• gives Kızılay access to the Family and Social Services Ministry's social-assistance data, under a protocol and Turkey's personal data protection law, to avoid duplicate aid;
• exempts Kızılay from a construction fee that funds prisons and courthouses;
• has the Social Security Institution pay Kızılay directly for blood components it supplies to public and university hospitals;
• exempts scientific and medical equipment, human-derived therapeutic substances and blood-grouping tests it imports for non-commercial use from customs duties, with a five-year bar on resale or transfer without customs approval.

T24 summarized Article 4 as "no-tender purchase authority" for Kızılay. Supporters describe it as a supply-security measure for disasters. According to statements recorded in the committee report, Kızılay's investment group is made up of 14 affiliates and companies, and all the income they earn returns to the association as donations.

The opposition's case: audits, volunteers and trust#

Calls for outside audits#

Deniz Demir, a deputy for the Republican People's Party (CHP) from Ankara, said the bill gives Kızılay new powers and "broad exemptions," including direct purchases outside the procurement law. Trusting an organization that works in the public interest does not mean exempting it from oversight, he said, and the more an institution's ties to public resources grow, the more it must answer for them.

"Can we give up on oversight by saying we trust an institution? Never," Demir said, according to T24. "On the contrary, we must make oversight a thousand times stronger so that society can trust that institution again with all its heart." He said his party did not want Kızılay weakened, and called for every decision to be disclosed and every activity "independently and effectively audited."

Serhat Eren, a deputy for the pro-Kurdish Peoples' Equality and Democracy Party (DEM) from Diyarbakır, was more direct. "Kızılay's companies have privileges, there are no-tender purchases, irregular transfers; there is an unaudited institution that does not give account," he said, according to the parliament's summary. "Yet Kızılay's real capital was the people's trust."

The audit question was argued out in committee in June. Members proposed that the Court of Accounts (Sayıştay), Turkey's supreme audit institution, be given authority to audit Kızılay, and that Kızılay report to parliament every year or two, according to the committee report. The bill's supporters answered that Court of Accounts audits are mainly for state economic enterprises that produce, sell and earn revenue, and that Kızılay "is not an institution like a state economic enterprise." They said Kızılay is already audited regularly by the Interior Ministry's directorate for civil society relations and by the State Supervisory Council, and that it receives no share of the central budget. The proposal was not added to the bill.

Volunteers left out of the new guarantee#

Article 7 amends Law No. 2330 on cash compensation and pensions, which provides payments to people killed or disabled while performing certain duties for the state. Under the bill, Kızılay staff who actually serve in a zone of operations during emergencies, disasters, war or armed conflict would be brought under that law's terms.

Elif Esen, a Yeni Yol group deputy from İstanbul, said her group supported the principle. But she said Kızılay's management had told the committee that the provision covers salaried staff whose social security Kızılay pays and who are formally assigned, and not volunteers. The committee report records the same point: the compensation provision "directly concerns Kızılay personnel" and "does not cover volunteers."

"Picture a disaster zone," Esen said, according to the parliament's summary. "Two people are working at the same aid point, one as a paid employee, the other as a registered volunteer. They are exposed to the same danger. Can we explain the difference between them, in terms of the special guarantee we are creating, only by whether they are paid?" She added, as reported by T24: "When there is a disaster, we call volunteers to duty. When we arrange the guarantee, you leave the same people out."

The tent sale and Kızılay's reputation#

Several speakers returned to the 2023 tent sale. On the third day after the Feb. 6, 2023, earthquakes centered in Kahramanmaraş, Kızılay Çadır ve Tekstil, a Kızılay subsidiary, sold 2,050 tents at cost to AHBAP, an aid association led by the musician Haluk Levent. The sale caused a public outcry. Kerem Kınık, then Kızılay's president, told a parliamentary earthquake inquiry in March 2023 that he had not known about it, NTV reported. "If they had asked me, I would not have done this," he said. He said the tents had been produced for the International Organization for Migration.

Aşkın Genç, a YENİ Parti deputy from Kayseri, said any discussion of Kızılay should include the tents sold during the earthquake, the journalists who exposed the sale and the pressure the press has faced. He also said a Kızılay hospital in Kayseri, built with donations so that low-income residents could get care, now charges examination and treatment fees that make it hard for those residents to use it.

Murat Çan of YENİ Parti cited Kızılay's current president as saying that trust in the organization fell to around 30% after the tent episode, according to T24. In his account, she said it had begun to recover since she took office. Kızılay's president is Fatma Meriç Yılmaz, whom Deputy Speaker Adan congratulated by name during the Nov. 3-4 sitting. 567politics did not find the survey behind the 30% figure.

The bill's sponsors addressed the tent sale in committee. The report records their view that a company, not the Kızılay association, made the sale, and that the matter had been "sufficiently" criticized. Judging all of Kızılay's work by one past event, they said, would be unfair to its tens of thousands of volunteers and staff.

A plasma deal with a South Korean company#

Rıdvan Uz, an İYİ Party deputy from Çanakkale, raised a separate deal. He said Kızılay had partnered with a South Korean company to produce domestic medicines from blood plasma, and that the company was being paid 65 million euros as a technology-transfer fee. "Why are we paying 65 million euros? Where is the domestic production? Why is plasma collected in Turkey being sent to South Korea? Why is a purchase guarantee being given?" he said, according to the parliament's summary. Uz did not name the company in the published accounts, and 567politics did not independently verify the payment figure and did not find a public response from Kızılay to his remarks.

Uz also opened his speech by remembering the workers killed in the explosion at the HABAŞ steel plant in Aliağa. He criticized the governing majority for voting down opposition motions for a parliamentary inquiry into the blast.

The government side: capacity, coordination and diplomacy#

Ahmet Erbaş, an MHP deputy from Kütahya and the committee's deputy chair, said the bill was not just a technical measure. He called it "an important step" that would strengthen Turkey's humanitarian capacity and disaster preparedness. He focused on data sharing. "I believe that developing cooperation and data sharing between institutions with this legal arrangement will help social assistance be planned more closely to needs and public resources be used more efficiently," he said. "Of course, in this process the protection of personal data and the privacy of our citizens must be respected; this must be our basic principle."

Yusuf Ahlatcı, an AKP deputy from Çorum, said the bill aims to strengthen Kızılay's institutional structure, clarify its duties and powers, and build its service capacity. "Kızılay reaching a stronger position in the global humanitarian system will contribute to our country's humanitarian diplomacy capacity," he said.

The committee report sets out the sponsors' wider case. It says 109 countries regulate their national Red Cross or Red Crescent society by special law. It cites Resolution 4 of the 34th International Conference of the Red Cross and Red Crescent, held in 2024, which encourages states to give national societies a clear legal status. Sponsors told the committee that Kızılay had responded to disasters and crises in 138 countries over the past decade. They also said its board members and president receive no attendance fees, that it uses no central budget money and that it funds its work largely through national and international donations.

The bill's earlier articles, already adopted, make Kızılay the sole body authorized to receive and use aid sent to Turkey by the international Red Cross and Red Crescent movement, according to the Assembly. That covers in-kind and cash aid from the International Federation, the International Committee of the Red Cross and other countries' national societies. As approved in committee, those articles also bar any other legal entity from claiming the rights the conventions give Kızılay and protect its name, flag and emblem from unauthorized use.

What comes next#

Parliament is scheduled to resume debate on the second section at 2 p.m. on Wednesday, Nov. 11. Articles 6 to 9 still need to be voted on one by one, followed by a final vote on the whole bill. Under Article 8, the law takes effect on the day it is published in the Official Gazette.

Three questions remain open. The first is whether the government accepts any change to Article 7 to cover registered volunteers, as Yeni Yol requested. The second is when the president will approve a new charter under Article 5, and what it will say about Kızılay's board and budget. The third is whether any outside audit of Kızılay's no-tender sales to the state will be required, a demand the governing majority rejected in committee.

How this story was reported#

567politics read the Grand National Assembly's summary of the Nov. 10 sitting, the bill record, the Interior Affairs Committee report and the seat distribution. We also read reports from Anadolu Agency, T24 (including ANKA news agency copy), Haberler.com, Habertürk and NTV. The dissenting opinions in the committee report are published as scanned pages and could not be quoted. Quotations from the floor were translated from Turkish by 567politics. Read more about how 567politics reports and checks sources.

Differing perspectives

Should Turkey's new Red Crescent law pass as drafted, or add outside audits and protection for volunteers?

Each position is summarized as its supporters make it, with equal weight and in alphabetical order. A summary is not an endorsement; the evidence for each is weighed in the story above.

• Add independent audits of Kızılay

  Who holds it: CHP deputy Deniz Demir, DEM Party deputy Serhat Eren, YENİ Parti deputies Murat Çan and Aşkın Genç

  New powers and exemptions, including no-tender sales of Kızılay products to the state and free transfers of public property, should come with stronger outside oversight, not less. Kızılay's companies should be audited independently, its decisions disclosed and its activities reported to parliament. After the 2023 tent sale damaged public trust, only full transparency and accountability can restore it.

  In their words: T24 (ANKA), floor remarks of Deniz Demir and Murat Çan ↗

• Extend the new guarantee to volunteers

  Who holds it: Yeni Yol group deputy Elif Esen

  The bill rightly extends state compensation and pensions to Kızılay staff who serve in disaster and war zones, but it should also cover registered volunteers. Paid staff and volunteers often work side by side at the same aid point and face the same danger. A state that calls volunteers to duty in a disaster should also take responsibility for the risks they take on.

  In their words: Grand National Assembly of Turkey, summary of the Nov. 10, 2026 sitting ↗

• Pass the law as drafted

  Who holds it: AKP and MHP deputies, including bill sponsor Hakan Aksu, committee chair Süleyman Soylu, Ahmet Erbaş and Yusuf Ahlatcı

  Turkey's Red Crescent should finally have its own law, as 109 countries already give their national societies. A clear legal basis, a charter approved at the highest level and direct access to its own disaster supplies let Kızılay respond faster when an earthquake or flood strikes. Data sharing with the social-aid system prevents duplicate aid, and Kızılay already faces regular state inspections without drawing on the central budget.

  In their words: Grand National Assembly of Turkey, Interior Affairs Committee report (Sira Sayisi 279) ↗

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