Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan delivers a speech during the mukhtars meeting at the presidential palace in Ankara.
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If those negotiations failed, the president said he would back a decision to consult the electorate on the issue.
Erdogan’s spokesperson said that Turkey’s foreign policy would not change following Sunday’s election. Indeed, it was because of the Kurds’ success in the June elections that Erdogan’s AK Party was denied a majority, compelling him to call for Sunday’s election.
“The adoption of a new constitution is very important for Turkey, as the current one doesn’t correspond to the interests of citizens and the state”, said the source. That and the fact that he and his party are more Islamic than much of his Turkish opposition occasionally cause American leaders to pause in working with him.
The strongman of Turkish politics for more than a decade, Erdogan has always been pushing for a new constitution to transform his post into a powerful US-style executive presidency.
“This is one of the issues on which we will not give up”. We believe it is worth considering the resumption of a ceasefire with the militants, which was suspended in July.
On Tuesday, four Kurdish rebels were killed after clashes with Turkish security forces in several parts of the restive southeast, local activists told ARA News.
He pledged to continue operations against the PKK until every last insurgent was “liquidated”.
Turkey has said it is planning to launch a military campaign soon against the Islamic State group which is accused of carrying out the deadliest attack in the country’s history. The exodus shows, in a sense, what close substitutes the two parties can be among a more nationalist voting bloc.
Erdogan also said Turkey will keep up its fight against the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, until the rebel group is “eliminated”.
The people who loathe Erdogan because he is destroying Turkey’s free media, perverting its criminal justice system and robbing the state blind – he and his AK colleagues have been enthusiastically feathering their nests – will not turn to violence.
Despite its stunning victory on Sunday, however, the AKP is still 13 seats short of the 330 required to call a referendum on any constitutional change.
Turkey’s strategic significance has grown because of the inflow of refugees from Syria and Iraq to Europe, and an effort to bring Erdogan into line was initiated by German Chancellor Angela Merkel on her recent visit to Turkey.
His spokesman, Ibrahim Kalin, rejected suggestions that the proposed change was simply an attempt to grab power. In fact, the outcome is seen as personal victory for the President.
“But in the absence of institutions that would ensure the checks and balances critical for running a presidential system, it makes sense to worry that Turkey may move in the direction of authoritarianism”, said Kemal Kirisci of the Brookings Institution. Others responded well to the AKP’s attacks against PKK-aligned Kurds in Turkey, Iraq and Syria: the biggest loser in the election was the far-right National Movement Party (MHP), which hemorrhaged votes to the AKP and fell from 80 seats to 40.
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Erdogan, who became prime minister in 2003 and then Turkey’s first directly-elected president in 2014, was initially hailed in the West for transforming Turkey into a model of Muslim democracy and turning around its basket-case economy.
