Mahmut Tanal

Mahmut Tanal (born 1 January 1961, Şanlıurfa, Turkey) is a Turkish politician and former lawyer who serves as a Member of Parliament for İstanbul in the Grand National Assembly. He is a member of the Republican People's Party (CHP).^[1]

Background

Tanal was born in the Bahçecik village, in Hilvan, Şanlıurfa in 1961. He studied in the İstanbul University law faculty between 1982 and 1986. Between 2005 and 2006, he participated in the political school in Bahçeşehir University, and again in 2009 at Okan University. Between 2006 and 2008, and later between 2010 and 2012, he was a delegate from the Bar of İstanbul to the Turkish Bars Association. He serves as a freelance lawyer.^[2]

He is married with two children.

Politics

He was elected as a Member of Parliament from İstanbul in the 2011 Turkish general election from the Republican People's Party.^[3]

During the Labour Day protests in Taksim Square on 1 May 2014, Tanal was reported to have sat down in front of a police vehicle in order to stop it from reaching the protestors. Daily Sabah reports that he was injured in a fight with the police who were trying to remove him.^[4]

On 9 July 2014, Tanal presented the CHP's objection to Recep Tayyip Erdoğan remaining as Prime Minister while also standing as a presidential candidate in the 2014 presidential election to the Supreme Electoral Council of Turkey.^[5] In a press statement, he also attributed the objection to the alleged incompatibility of Erdoğan's ideological and political history with the office of the Presidency, and referred to the judicial decision in 2008 to curb Erdoğan's AK Party state funding due to "violations of democratic and secular principles" as "applying not to a party, but to a person" in this case.^[6]

References