Erdogan would like a more powerful presidency; fine say his opponents, as long as it’s United States style, with checks and balances.
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“I hope they will sit down at the table and solve this issue”, he said, adding that he had discussed it at a meeting with Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu on Tuesday.
But didn’t Turkey have another general election only recently?
The AKP won only 258 seats but needed 276 to govern alone, 330 to call for a referendum on the presidential system and 367 for the supermajority to pass through changes without consulting the public.
Erdogan’s party lost its majority rule in June but won renewed support and a new majority in Sunday’s parliamentary election.
It appears that most of the newly-gained votes for the AKP came from conservative Kurdish HDP voters and Turkish nationalist MHP voters, as both parties saw a serious drop in their support. The main opposition party, the secularist CHP, was only able to take 25 percent of the vote while the left-wing HDP was barely able to cross the threshold to make it into parliament, but the votes it received were reduced from 13 percent to 10 percent. Erdogan and the AKP can not escape responsibility for that turmoil. Violence tied to the PKK, which is fighting for more Kurdish autonomy in the region, has left more than 40,000 people dead since the 1980s. This resulted in government crackdown on terror, which too seemed to have helped muster crucial votes for the ruling party.
Now that the elections are passé, the AKP Government needs to regroup and set on course its agenda for the next four years. One of the foremost things that need to be done is to send out a strong message of national peace and reconciliation. He was particularly contemptuous of the global media: “Why is the world media taking such a close interest in Turkey while ignoring their own countries?”
The PKK had said in early October it would suspend all attacks – except in self defence – to ease tensions ahead of the Nov 1 poll that returned President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s AKP to single-party government. The violence in neighboring Syria spilled over the border amid news of Russian military intervention in that years-long civil war. Suat Kiniklioglu, executive director of Ankara-based think-tank Center for Strategic Communication, said, “Even if the AKP fails to introduce a new constitution, President Erdogan can keep enjoying current de facto presidential system, backed by an AKP majority in parliament”. A military campaign was launched against the militant Kurdish Workers’ Party, the PKK, but in the process more than 250 civilians, including 30 children, lost their lives. One of the options could be the pro-Kurdish HDP which has entered the Parliament with 59 seats.
Nonetheless, Turkey’s new government has been provided with a broad enough mandate to address a few of the country’s most hard and imminent policy challenges – most notably the peace process with the Kurds.
“The debates on presidential system are not out of concern over his future”.
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The PKK has been fighting for an autonomous Kurdish region inside Turkey since the 1980s. It hosts an estimated 3 million Syrian and other refugees and is in the direct path of the fearsome wave of migration toward Europe from war-torn areas of the Middle East.
