Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu returned a mandate to form a government Tuesday after his coalition-building efforts failed.
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“Whomever I give the mandate to, that person will form an election government with a cabinet from inside and if necessary from outside parliament”, Erdogan told reporters in Istanbul after attending Friday prayers.
Addressing locally-elected heads of Turkish villages and neighborhoods at the Presidential Palace in the capital Ankara Wednesday, Erdogan said: “Unfortunately, Turkey could not meet a new government because no results were obtained in the [coalition] talks”.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan appeared a shadow of his former self after his party suffered major losses in the June election – embattled and no longer in control of his political fate.
Erdogan said Wednesday that Turkey was swiftly heading to a new election, adding that the only solution in the current political deadlock was turning to the “will of the nation”.
A report last November from the UN Security Council’s Analytical Support and Sanctions Monitoring Team notes that the primary routes for the arms smuggled to ISIL and the al-Nusra Front run through Turkey.
The third-placed Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), like the CHP, opposed involvement in an interim government, while the fourth-placed pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) is warm to the idea.
Turkish law requires that the interim government include members of all four parties represented in parliament, but two opposition parties have already said they would not participate.
Erdogan said Turkey faced a problem of forming a new government at a time of “terror”, accusing the PKK for working “to divide our country” despite AKP steps to improve Kurds’ cultural and language rights.
The ruling AK Party failed to hold on to its majority in a June 7 election, leaving it unable to govern alone for the first time since coming to power in 2002. “That was his plan from the get-go to call for early elections“, said Gönül Tol, director of the Center for Turkish Studies at the Middle East Institute in Washington D.C.
Still, Mr. Erdogan said he would not delay the inevitable.
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However, the election board has the power to cut this 90-day period by half, and as such, drafted a calendar so that preparations could be completed within 60 days in case of an early election call, shortening objection and application deadlines.
