Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced today, May 27, that he has appointed ten lawyers to draft their proposal for Turkey‘s new constitution.

On the occasion of today’s 65th anniversary of the 1960 military coup that led to the hanging of then-Prime Minister Adnan Menderes and the foreign and interior ministers, the Turkish president said, speaking to the heads of the AKP party’s county committees, “As of yesterday, I appointed ten of my legal friends. From now on they start working. God willing, we will proceed with the work on the new constitution.”

In addition to the 65th anniversary of the 1960 coup, this year also marks the 40th anniversary of General Kenan Evren’s military coup in 1980. Although Erdogan’s government has made several revisions since 2002, largely changing the spirit of the military men who drafted the current constitution at the time, Erdogan insists that it bears the stamp of the coup generals and argues that the country should have a new constitution that will form the basis on which to build the “century of Turkey” that he advocates. Critics of President Erdogan accuse him of attempting to alter the secular and national character of the regime and that the constitutional revision is merely a pretext to enable him to run for the presidency again in 2028.

“The 1982 Constitution, which has been largely stripped of its structural elements by the revisions made, still bears the remnants of the coup period. The new constitution will allow us to get rid of these remnants and get rid of the grave they put us in,” Recep Tayyip Erdogan asserted, stressing that “we will definitely rid the nation of the shame of the Constitution of the coup plotters.”