Turkey: Six opposition parties discuss roadmap for return to parliamentary system

[Homajon]

Turkish opposition deepens cooperation, heaping pressure on Erdogan

By Daren Butler and Birsen Altayli

• Turkey faces presidential, parliamentary elections by 2023
• Erdogan suffered blow to dominance in 2019 local elections
• Polls suggest discontent over handling of economic problems
• Opposition aims to complete talks on cooperation by year-end

ISTANBUL, Oct 8 (Reuters) - Six Turkish opposition parties are stepping up collaboration in their bid to unseat Tayyip Erdogan and his AK Party at elections due by 2023, raising pressure on the president as opinion polls point to dwindling support for his ruling alliance.

Broadening the coordination which helped them deal a blow to Erdogan at 2019 local elections, the parties held a third meeting on Tuesday and plan weekly meetings to agree shared principles by year-end, those involved in the talks said.

"The opposition in Turkey is trying something that has never been tried before: getting united to confront the government," political commentator Murat Yetkin said.

Support for Erdogan's government is ebbing amid criticism of its handling of economic woes such as high inflation and unemployment, the COVID-19 pandemic and forest fires and floods.

Opinion polls show the AK Party on around 31-33%, down from 42.6% in the 2018 parliamentary election, and its nationalist MHP ally on 8-9%, down from 11.1%, levels which would lead to Erdogan losing control of parliament at the next election.

The opposition talks aim to identify shared principles, rather than agreeing a presidential candidate, with the goal of ditching the presidential system of government introduced in 2018 and returning to a parliamentary system, participants said.

IYI Party deputy chairman Bahadir Erdem said they agreed to focus on issues such as independence of the judiciary, media and academia, and laws concerning political parties and elections, with the aim of boosting the separation of powers and democracy.

"These six parties coming together is giving people hope. Instead of divisiveness, there is togetherness, uniting on common ground," Erdem told Reuters, contrasting it with what he said was the polarization under two decades of AKP rule.

CHP deputy chairman Muharrem Erkek, who also attended the talks, said Turkey was being "dragged to the edge of a precipice" by the presidential system, which puts far greater powers in the hands of the head of state.

"Citizens' problems are worsening under this one-man system... A strengthened parliamentary system will inspire confidence," he said.

Senior AK Party deputy Bulent Turan dismissed the talks on restoring the parliamentary system as "reactionary", saying the new system worked well and had reduced political instability.

Challenges
An alliance of the right-wing IYI Party and the center-left CHP led to Erdogan's AKP losing control of Istanbul and Ankara municipalities in 2019, shattering his image of invincibility.

Since then, the government has faced growing economic and political challenges, and its handling of them has triggered rare expressions of concern in pro-Erdogan media.

Sabah newspaper columnist Dilek Gungor questioned the government's success in communicating its achievements, such as major infrastructure projects over the last 20 years.

"Unfortunately, the government cannot even motivate its own base despite all these services and huge projects," she wrote.

One-time allies of Erdogan are among the leaders of parties involved in the opposition talks, with ex-prime minister Ahmet Davutoglu's Future Party and ex-economy minister Ali Babacan's Deva Party taking part.

However, the talks do not include the second biggest opposition party, the pro-Kurdish HDP, which has said it is not seeking to join any alliance.

Polling consultancy Konda's general manager Bekir Agirdir said left-wing and Kurdish voices needed to be involved in discussions if they aim to boost democracy.

"If the opposition does not look from the perspective of pluralism, it may win the election... but this change may create new and bigger chaos as it does not solve the country's real social problems," he told the T24 media outlet.

Turkish opposition deepens cooperation, heaping pressure on Erdogan

Six Turkish opposition parties are stepping up collaboration in their bid to unseat Tayyip Erdogan and his AK Party at elections due by 2023, raising pressure on the president as opinion polls point to dwindling support for his ruling alliance.

www.reuters.com

 

[Foinikas]

I used a word that is widely used in europe by political commentators. If that hurt your feelings, i apology because it was not my intention to do so.

Im not a troll in any way. As you can see i stay always friendly and never use foul language

That said i have zero interest in Pakistan or indian politics. I only joined here because its only way to talk to iranians and turks online and im interested in their point of views. I have nothing against Pakistan and know nothing about it. And yes, im a kid, so what? You were never young?

But ok, peace

Don't mind him,he's a fanatically pro-Turkish Pakistani. There's dozens of Pakistanis here who criticize Turkey or at least understand that Erdogan's government is a bit weird,but many are pro-Turkish no matter what. I believe Erdogan will not lose the elections. He will either win no matter what. He will not let any other politician take power from him.

 

[Homajon]

Turkish Opposition Begins Joining Ranks Against Erdogan

With an eye on elections, six parties are working on a plan to end a powerful presidency and return to a parliamentary system.

A coalition of opposition parties is preparing to challenge the long reign of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey. Credit...Pool photo by Vladimir Smirnov


By Carlotta Gall
Oct. 23, 2021, 8:09 a.m. ET

ISTANBUL — Turkish opposition parties are presenting an increasingly united and organized front aimed at replacing President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and even forcing early elections in the coming year to challenge his 19-year rule.

As they negotiate a broad alliance among themselves, the leaders of six opposition parties appear to have agreed on turning the next election into a kind of referendum on the presidential system that Mr. Erdogan introduced four years ago and considers one of his proudest achievements.

His opponents say that presidential system has allowed Mr. Erdogan to concentrate nearly authoritarian power — fueling corruption and allowing him to rule by decree, dictate monetary policy, control the courts and jail tens of thousands of political opponents.

By making the change back to a parliamentary system a centerpiece of its agenda, Mr. Erdogan’s opposition hopes to shift debate to the fundamental question of the deteriorating health of Turkey’s democracy.

The forming of a broad opposition alliance is a strategy being employed in an increasing number of countries where leaders with authoritarian tendencies — whether President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia or Prime Minister Viktor Orban of Hungary — have enhanced their powers by exploiting fissures among their opponents. Most recently, the approach worked in elections in the Czech Republic, where a broad coalition of center-right parties came together to defeat Prime Minister Andrej Babis.

Now it may be Turkey’s turn.

“Today, Turkey is facing a systemic problem. Not just one person can solve it,” said Ahmet Davutoglu, Mr. Erdogan’s former prime minister and one of the members of the opposition alliance. “The more important question is: ‘How do you solve this systemic earthquake, and how do you re-establish democratic principles based on human rights?’”

Mr. Erdogan has long planned a year of celebrations for 2023, the 100-year anniversary of the founding of the Turkish Republic in 1923 from the ashes of the Ottoman Empire and allied occupation after World War I.

Political analysts suggest that not only is he determined to secure another presidential term in elections that are due before June 2023, but also to secure his legacy as modern Turkey’s longest-serving leader, longer even than the founder of the republic, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk.

A statue of modern Turkey’s founder, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, in Ankara, the capital.Credit...Adem Altan/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Yet Mr. Erdogan, who has always prided himself on winning at the ballot box, has been sliding steadily in the opinion polls, battered by an economic crisis, persistent allegations of corruption and entitlement and a youthful population chafing for change.

For the first time in several years of asking, more respondents in a recent poll said Mr. Erdogan would lose than said he would win, Ozer Sencar, the head of Metropoll, one of the most reliable polling organizations, said in a Twitter post this week.

“The opposition seems to have the momentum on their side,” said Asli Aydintasbas, a senior fellow with the European Council on Foreign Relations. “One way or another, they convinced a large section of society that Erdogan is not a lifetime president and could be gone in 2023. That Turks are now discussing the possibility of a post-Erdogan Turkey is quite remarkable.”

No one is counting Mr. Erdogan out yet. He remains a popular politician and sits at the helm of an effective state apparatus, Ms. Aydintasbas added. An improvement in the economy and a maneuver to split the opposition could be enough for him to hold on.

Mr. Erdogan dismissed the polls as lies and carried on doing what he knows best: a flurry of high-level meetings and some saber-rattling that keeps him at the top of the news at home. One recent weekend, he pushed a shopping cart around a low-cost supermarket and promised more such stores to keep prices down for shoppers.

This week, he set off on a four-country tour of West Africa after hosting the departing German chancellor, Angela Merkel, for her farewell visit to Turkey over the weekend.

He is presenting Turkey as an indispensable mediator with Afghanistan, and his foreign minister received a delegation of the Taliban from Kabul last week. For good measure, Mr. Erdogan threatened another military operation against Kurdish fighters in Syria.

Mr. Erdogan and Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany after a news conference this month in Istanbul.Credit...Ozan Kose/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

But at home, his opponents are getting organized.

Among those lining up to do battle are Mr. Davutoglu and a former finance minister, Ali Babacan, both former members of Mr. Erdogan’s conservative Justice and Development Party, or A.K.P., who have set up new parties.

Emerging from five years in the cold after falling out with Mr. Erdogan and resigning as prime minister and leader of the party, Mr. Davutoglu is hoping to chip away at the president’s loyal support base and help bring down his onetime friend and ally.

Alongside them, the strongest players in the six-party alliance are the center-left Republican People’s Party and the nationalist Good Party, headed by Turkey’s leading female politician, Meral Aksener.

The largest pro-Kurdish party, the Democratic People’s Party, or H.D.P. — whose charismatic former leader, Selahattin Demirtas, is in prison — is not part of the alliance, nor are smaller left-wing parties.

But all of the parties share a mutual aim: to offer the electorate an alternative to Mr. Erdogan in 2023.

Despite their gaping political and ideological differences, the opposition is hoping to replicate its success in local elections in 2019 when it wrested the biggest cities, including Istanbul, from the ruling A.K.P.

“It is a good start for the opposition,” Mr. Demirtas said from prison in an interview with a Turkish reporter. “What is important is the development of a deliberative, pluralistic, courageous and pro-solidarity understanding of politics that will contribute to the development of a culture of democracy.”

Selahattin Demirtas, the former leader of the People’s Democratic Party, in 2014 in his office in Ankara. He remains a powerful voice for the party from a prison cell.Credit...Monique Jaques for The New York Times

Mr. Erdogan spent the past six months trying to drive a wedge into their loose alliance without success, said Ozgur Unluhisarcikli, the director of the Ankara office of the German Marshall Fund of the United States.

Opposition leaders steered through that and have come closer to settling on a candidate who could defeat Mr. Erdogan and whom they can all support. Kemal Kilicdaroglu, the leader of largest opposition party, the Republican People’s Party, has emerged as the front-runner for now.
“They have closed ranks, solved their problems and raised the stakes,” Mr. Unluhisarcikli said.

Fore their part, Mr. Davutoglu and Mr. Babacan represent little challenge to Mr. Erdogan as vote-getters — Mr. Davutoglu’s Future Party polls at barely 1 or 2 percent — but they bring considerable weight of government experience to the opposition.

Both still have ties to many officials in the bureaucracy, Mr. Unluhisarcikli said, and could help the opposition convince the electorate that it is capable of running the country and of lifting it out of its current dysfunction.

Mr. Davutoglu was the first to publish his plan for returning to a parliamentary system. In the document, he blamed the presidential system for creating a personalized and arbitrary administration that became inaccessible to citizens even as their problems were mounting.

He proposed that the president become a symbolic head of state, divested of powers to rule by decree, veto laws and approve the budget, and the judiciary be made independent.

“Today, Turkey is facing a systemic problem. Not just one person can solve it,” said Ahmet Davutoglu, Mr. Erdogan’s former prime minister and one of the members of the opposition alliance.Credit...Burhan Ozbilici/Associated Press

Mr. Davutoglu has suggested that Mr. Erdogan, who instituted the presidential system with a narrowly won referendum in 2017, could choose to revert to a parliamentary system with a two-thirds majority in Parliament, or the opposition would seek to do so after an election.
For the opposition, he said, reaching an agreement on reconstituting a democratic system is more important than finding a candidate. Just in the past year of touring the country meeting voters, he said he has seen a shift in attitudes even in A.K.P. strongholds.

“A significant portion of Turkish voters have left the A.K.P. but don’t know where to go,” Ms. Aydintasbas said. “Davutoglu and Babacan may be small in numbers, but they speak to a very critical community — disgruntled conservatives and conservative Kurds who no longer trust Erdogan but are worried about a revanchist return of the secularists. Their role is indispensable.”


Carlotta Gall is the Istanbul bureau chief, covering Turkey. She previously covered the aftershocks of the Arab Spring from Tunisia, reported from the Balkans during the war in Kosovo and Serbia, and covered Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Turkish Opposition Begins Joining Ranks Against Erdogan

With an eye on elections, six parties are working on a plan to end a powerful presidency and return to a parliamentary system.

www.nytimes.com