Davutoglu has five days to form a temporary Cabinet – which would include opposition party legislators – to oversee the poll.
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“Mr. President negotiated with Turkish Grand National Assembly Speaker Ismet Yilmaz and decided on the renewal of parliamentary elections,” said the presidency statement. “Now, what should be done is to update this de facto situation in the legal framework of the constitution”, In other words, Mr. Erdogan is already the executive president who decides everything – if “de facto authority” sounds an bad lot like “illegal power grab”, that’s just a misunderstanding…
Mr Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) have been unable to form a coalition government with the opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP).
The president is also expected to give a mandate to Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu to form an interim “election government” to take the country to the November polls.
Under the constitution, all parties should be represented in such an “election government” according to the seats they hold in parliament.
He is the first president in Turkish history not to grant the party with the second-largest vote count a chance to set up a working coalition before ordering new ballots. The reason behind the defeat of the well-to-do party of Turkey was the emergence of the People’s Democratic Party (HDP), a party with novel centre-left motives with Kurds as its representatives, which form major percentage of the Turkish population.
He is expected to be appointed to head an interim government to carry Turkey over to elections.
The uncertainty, coming as the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation member battles Islamic State insurgents on its borders and Kurdish militants at home, has unnerved investors and sent the lira currency to a series of record lows.
The June 7 election had caused the ruling AKP to lose its majority in parliament, but it did cause Erdogan to lose control over the political agenda in the country.
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HDP’s June showing, equal to 13 percent of the votes, helped to deny AKP the supermajority it sought to transform Erdogan’s office into the nation’s power center.
