Coalition talks under Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu were largely taken up with discussions with the CHP but last week he announced the gap between the two parties was too wide to bridge.
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About giving the Republican People’s Party (CHP) leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu the mandate before the 45-day deadline, Erdogan said: “Why would I invite him [Kilicdaroglu] to Bestepe [Presidential Palace], [he] who said “I do not recognize Bestepe”.
“Because of the failure to form a government, we have to seek a solution with the will of the people…so we are heading rapidly towards an election again”, Erdogan said in a speech to local officials, broadcast live on television.
Turkey’s election board on Thursday proposed holding snap legislative polls on November. 1, adding to tensions amid a grave security crisis and sending the Turkish lira to a new historic low.
Erdogan, who suffered a rare setback in inconclusive June polls, said he would meet the parliament speaker on Monday to make arrangements and formally call new elections, likely for November 1.
Erdogan reportedly favors an early election hoping that the ruling party which he founded can regain the majority it lost in the June election. The nationalist MHP says one of its main priorities is to end for good now-stalled government peace negotiations with the autonomy-seeking Kurdish militants.
Erdogan is expected to assign Davutoglu with forming the interim government that includes members from all parties in the Parliament.
A deadline for political parties to agree to form a government following the 7 June elections runs out on Sunday, with the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) failing to form a coalition. “That was his plan from the get-go to call for early elections“, said Gönül Tol, director of the Center for Turkish Studies at the Middle East Institute in Washington D.C.
The popular issue nowadays in the political backstage is whether the AKP would invite the HDP into the interim government, in which the CHP and MHP refused to take part.
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U.S. F-16 fighter jets hit Islamic State targets in northern Syria this week in their first strikes from Turkey’s Incirlik airbase since winning approval to use the facility. This was the “royal “we”, of course, followed by an insistence on new elections immediately, despite the CHP’s insistence that they are “willing to form a government” and are “waiting to be given the mandate”.
