Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu formally ended attempts to find a junior coalition partner on Tuesday after weeks of talks with opposition parties failed.
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President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is gearing up to declare a repeat election in Turkey after a 45-day period to form a coalition government did little but deepen political divisions and send markets into a tailspin.
“After 45 days, I will meet my parliament speaker again and after this talk, we will hopefully bring our country to an early election”, Erdogan said in Istanbul, according to Anadolu Agency.
Davutoglu’s AK Party lost its 12-year majority rule in Turkey in elections in June largely because of the success of the pro-Kurdish HDP. In the meantime, Erdoğan will ask Davutoğlu to form an interim power-sharing government.
Both CHP and MHP have opposed a new ballot and said they would stay out of an election government. It suggests renewed polling might be held in November.
Investors have been rattled by the prospect of early elections and political uncertainty as well as spiralling violence between Turkish security forces and Kurdish militants, smashing a 2013 ceasefire.
The deadline for forming a government is August 23, and after that the current ruling party, the AKP, will either have to get approval for an election date or President Erdogan will have to form an “election government” with opposition parties to make the arrangements.
This week President Erdogan therefore announced that “We have no time to lose with those who do not know the address of Beştepe” (the 1000+ room palace that Mr. Kilicdaroglu claims was built illegally and which he refuses to set foot in).
It remains to be seen if the AKP will improve on its vote share of just under 41 percent in the new polls, and commentators have described Erdogan’s strategy as a major political gamble.
Under the constitution, all parties should be represented in any interim “election government” according to the seats they hold in parliament.
– Until a new parliament is formed, the existing parliament keeps its authority.
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Deputy Prime Ministers Bulent Arinc and Numan Kurtulmus, two leaders of the AKP, said following the elections that the party would prefer a coalition government to a return to the polls. At the same time, Turkey has launched its own airstrikes against Islamic State targets and has bombed Kurdish Workers’ Party (PKK) camps in northern Iraq.
