The Daily Journalist.
The landslide victory of the Justice and Development Party (AKP) in Sunday’s legislative reform has returned to the center of the presidential debate system. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan wants to change the Constitution to establish a president with executive power. The opposition is favorable to revamp the Constitution, written after the 1980 coup, but fears that the real objective of the head of state is to concentrate power in his unimted credit with little accountability.
It was not even a day after the announcement of the AKP parliamentary absolute majority of its members were already declaring intentions to reform the financial and social sectors. Some, such as up to 30% the minimum wage, were received with open arms; others, like remaking the 1982 Constitution, with eyebrow bows. The spokesman for the Islamist training, Ömer Çelik, called on day two the opposition to work collectively for a new constitution, “according to the needs of the country.”
Çelik not elaborated on its proposed Constitution, but Deputy Prime Minister Akdogan Yalçin did so the next day, when he remembered that the AKP’s electoral program included the reform of the presidential system. Finally, a day later, the president’s spokesman, Ibrahim Kalin, told reporters that “such an important issue, this debate can not be considered outside the country. If the mechanism changed, it would lead to a referendum” .
Shortly after he spoke Kalin, the November 4, Recep Tayyip Erdogan addressed the audience from his palace to a group of Muhtar (neighborhood leaders), and told them to work for a new Constitution should start immediately. Erdogan won the August 10, 2014, the first presidential election with direct suffrage. Have been chosen by the people is one of the reasons that argues to defend its legitimate right to govern.
On November 1, the AKP, Erdogan left party to be elected head of state, won 317 of 550 seats is in the Grand National Assembly. That is an absolute majority in the House, but is less than the two-thirds majority needed to amend the Constitution unilaterally, and is 13 deputies of three-fifths, so he could not make a binding referendum on constitutional reform without the support of some MPs who are now in other formations.
Another Constitution, yes, but which one?
The opposition wants to sit to rewrite the constitution. Gürsel Tekin, secretary general of the Social Democratic People’s Republican Party (CHP) -the second most voted list the 1N- this week announced its willingness to dialogue, which has also made the pro-Kurdish People’s Democratic Party (HDP). But neither formations wants to pass along to the new constitution, reform of the political system, without describing clearly, Erdogan craves.
“I who decides who should be working and can not do under the current system because there are those, judges, for example, they avoid” protested Erdogan during an interview on the public channel TRT earlier this year. Then he charged as “inadequate” the current parliamentary system in Turkey: “You can not run a country or a city like this,” he complained.
His detractors accuse Erdogan of seeking a presidency with minimal accountability and broad powers of the deputies, what they call “authoritarianism”. A Turkish government official, quoted on condition of anonymity because his position qualifies to the world that the lack of accountability is just a problem of the current formulation of the president. “The [new] presidential system would introduce accountability to the presidency,” he stresses.
A ceremonial and neutral charge
Until 2007 the reform approved in a referendum to elect the president by voting, as designated by this Parliament. The office established in 1923, is ceremonial and neutral while allowing important provisions such as the mobilization of troops, the presence in cabinet meetings, the adoption of laws and the appointment of judges to the Supreme Court. “The system was designed for the president, a representative of the military, not to surrender accounts,” said the same official.
Since the arrival of Recep Tayyip Erdogan, their presence in cabinet meetings have been regular. Even more are recurring pronouncements on political issues and opinions in favor of the AKP party, which he founded and who was prime minister for more than a decade. For voters of the AKP, Erdogan is a charismatic leader and a necessary reference. For opponents, the president is someone who exceeded his duties and by remote control against the Constitution.
The role of president is the cornerstone that prevents the drafting of a new constitution. And it was in 2011, when the parties in Parliament opened a commission to draft a new text. Erdogan demands to reformulate the presidency, the group can only agree on 60 items and could not go on. To reopen this commission ultranationalists required to negotiate with the pro-Kurdish, something that until now he has refused.
Although Erdogan decided impulses and the AKP to install a presidential system, emphasizing that they have the votes of the majority of people, surveys contradict his intentions. The latter, developed by the IPSOS firm after the election, indicates that 57% of Turks opt for maintaining the current parliamentary system. 31% opt for the presidential system, but lack itemize to the public the project of the president.
“Turkey needs a constitution. Discuss this with the [pretext] of the presidential debate is wrong,” said Selahattin Demirtas this week, co-chairman of the pro-Kurdish People’s Democratic Party (HDP). “We want a strong democratic parliamentary system, strengthening decentralization,” said Demirtas. This training is another issue at hand intimately tied to dialogue with the AKP, which is to resume the peace process with the PKK guerrillas.
The militants are happy to announce the end of the unilateral ceasefire declared on the occasion of the elections. “You can not keep [the ceasefire] no effect against pro-war policies of the AKP and its operations [against the PKK],” the guerrillas announced in a statement. In the last hours, the Government has declared a curfew in 22 neighborhoods in southeast Turkey, mainly Kurdish, as part of a macro operation against the militants.
Several civilians and three Turkish soldiers were killed in clashes in the region in recent days. On Wednesday, two soldiers were killed in clashes with the PKK in Yüksekova. In Silvan, Diyarbakir province, two young men were shot dead during street battles. The second injured aunt to go to death by his nephew. They joined the three civilians killed in the area on Tuesday.
Ankara has ordered to continue military operations against the PKK even during winter, a time when usually the militia stopped their attacks. In recent months, however, its scope of action has been extended to the less isolated than the mountains, which are based towns. Both the AKP and the HDP calls made this week to back the peace process in the fridge from the return to arms of the PKK four months ago.
