Turkey is considering holding a referendum on plans to expand the powers of presidency into a US-style executive role, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s spokesman said on Wednesday.
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The Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) on Thursday ended a unilateral “inaction” period that it had called last month ahead of Sunday’s elections, saying the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) has shown it intends to be a “war government”. Relations between Israel and Turkey have snagged under AKP and its charismatic leader, Erdogan, who has served both as prime minister and now as president. In last June’s polls the AKP had faced first setback of its 13-year rule, when it could not win enough seats to form government on its own and also failed to find a coalition partner. The June election was the first time since he created the party and they ran for parliament that AKP did not receive an absolute majority of over 50%.
Valansi said she thought Turkish-Israeli relations could benefit from a single-party government as well as the absence of a powerful opposition.
Opposition parties agree on the need for a new constitution but do not back the presidential system envisaged by Erdogan. In early October, about 100 people were killed in Ankara by suicide bombings believed to be conducted by ISIL.
“But if they want to add an executive presidency to that process, I tell them to not even come near to our door”, he added.
According to a Turkey’s state-run Anadolu news agency, more than 150 Turkish soldiers and police officers have been killed since July 7 in armed attacks blamed on the PKK, which has been fighting for an autonomous Kurdish region inside Turkey since the 1980s.
Within hours of the end of the election, the government made new moves to clamp down on what remains of press freedom in Turkey. The president is now seeking constitutional amendments that would give more power to the president. In the absence of the HDP in Parliament most of those seats would have gone to the AKP and the party would have a supermajority to change the constitution.
The main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) won just over 25 percent, giving the AKP a far wider margin of victory than predicted. Turkey is the conduit through which hundreds of thousands of desperate people are fleeing, en route to the Balkan states and ultimately northern Europe – to say nothing of the refugee population already hosted by Turkey.
Instead, the president and the government should focus on the causes of renewed violence in Turkey. However, with Turkey increasingly perceived as too instable for foreign investments and with the ever-looming threat of civil war, can the AKP perform a miracle and quickly pull the Turkish economy from the brink?
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Four PKK militants were killed on Tuesday after clashes with the Turkish security forces in southeastern Turkey.
