The final meeting of Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu with the head of the opposition Republican People’s Party Kemal Kilicdaroglu took place August. 13 in Turkey.
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“What (PKK) meant was: ‘if a solution is brought back onto the political agenda, they won’t even have to call for us to lay arms, we will do it anyway, ‘” Demirtas said, adding that a strong showing for the HDP in parliamentary elections in November would increase the chances of resuming talks. When the HDP passed the election threshold for the first time in June, it cost the AK Party seats that would have enabled it to form a single-party government.
The announcement for a new round of polling came after Erdogan called a snap general election last Monday.
The HDP’s success deprived the Justice and Development Party (AKP) founded by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of a parliamentary majority.
“I believe our government, together with the armed forces and the Interior Ministry, will overcome [the election process] with minimum damage by taking all measures”, Erdogan told press members at a reception of the Victory Day – marking its 93rd anniversary this year – in the presidential palace in Ankara.
The 26-member cabinet is largely dominated by the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), but will also include two ministers of the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) and one from the far-right Nationalist Movement Party (MHP). No president in this country has been neutral.
A fresh voting in Turkey will be held almost five months after an inconclusive election on June 7 saw no party win an overall majority in parliament.
Much attention has been given to the appointment of Aysen Gurcan as family and social minister, as she is the first woman wearing the Muslim headscarf to serve in the Turkish cabinet.
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“The prospects after November 1 may just amount to more of the same: a democratically-elected president confronted with a democratically-expressed “No” to his executive presidency ambition”, said Marc Pierini, a visiting scholar at Carnegie Europe.
