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Rethinking Turkish Presidency on Behalf of Turkish Opposition Parties

Since Nationalist Party Leader Devlet Bahceli has called AKP Government to bring the legislative amendment to Turkish Parliament that transforms Turkish Parliamentary System into a Turkish Presidency, pros and cons of Presidential System has become a hot topic in Turkey. AKP politicians and pro-AKP media enthusiastically supports Presidential System that they believe Turkey has lost many years because of political coalitions and Presidency will bring political stability to Turkey. On the other hand, opposition parties (including Republican Party-CHP and People’ Democratic Party-HDP) and the media those critical to AKP’s political actions, criticize the Presidential System due to Turkey’s political and law structure is not mature enough to maintain such a political system. They also emphasize that launching the Presidential System may cause abuse of power of Presidents who may have a tendency to authoritarianism. 

Concerns of both sides are fair enough and their arguments are consistent in itself if Turkey’s political past is taken into consideration. However, transformation of Turkish Parliamentary System into a Presidency might be a better chance for existing Turkish Opposition Parties to win political competition against the AKP. 

If elections result from 2002 is analysed, AKP won five consecutive general elections and one Presidential election in 2014 in which nominees are elected by public rather than Turkish Parliament. Within these elections, AKP succeeded to take majority of the seats in the Parliament and Recep Tayyip Erdogan has become the first elected Turkish President. During the 2014 Presidential election, the total votes those won by the nominees who are against the Recep Tayyip Erdogan was %48. This result was achieved despite the fact that many strategic mistakes made by opposition parties during the election. Firstly, Republican and Nationalist party have nominated a low profile candidate who is not well known by Turkish electorate and who could not compete with Recep Tayyip Erdogan to make efficient propaganda speeches. Secondly, they did not congregate on one candidate in the second round of election to enforce indecisive anti-Erdogan voters to vote on their candidate. By nominating their candidate in the first round of elections, they provided an opportunity to Erdogan using instability argument in his campaign.  If these mistakes were not made, the gap between Erdogan and another candidate may be less than we observed. 

Within this current political situation, during the life time of Erdogan opposition parties have little chance to win elections. The main reason that undermines the success of opposition parties is lack of harmony to pursue a coalition. There is no common ground between Republican, Nationalist and Pro-Kurdish Party Leaders on the same matter even sometimes they share similar political view. Disagreements among party leaders depicts a dark picture to Turkish voters to support such a coalition which is thought to endanger existing political and economic stability in Turkey. 

In this respect, Presidential System might be a new chance for opposition parties to gain the governmental power and could be an entrapment for the AKP. If Presidential System came into life in Turkey, there will be two sides of election. On the one side, AKP will lead political dominance and candidate chosen by AKP will be the nominee of the Presidency. On the other side of political competition, there will be compulsory and natural coalition that will start at the beginning of election. Compromises and distribution of ministries will be made before participating the voting.  If opposition parties can come together and they can choose a high profile candidate, question marks on constituency about political and economic stability will eliminated.  As we all know that there are many voters in Turkey who are not fancy with the AKP but supports their party in consideration of Turkey’s political stability and their self-interest. These voters will be no hesitant to vote to the other presidency candidate who will have no more coalition problem to establish a government.

If current Parliamentary System exists, all opposition parties have little chance to win upcoming elections. Unfortunately, all these parties are not “catch all parties” who could only gain votes from specific electorate. If they manage to come together under the umbrella of a strong political candidate, they can also convince AKP voters who are not happy with their party’s inconsistent policies. Therefore, opposition leaders should rethink Presidency System in order to win elections as well as ending the vicious circle that always end up with AKP’s election success.

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