MOHAMMAD PERVEZ BILGRAMI analyses the political situation in Turkey, which is heading to snap election on November 1 this year.
Turkey is heading to snap election on November 1 this year after the political parties failed to form a coalition government when June 7 general election had resulted in a hung Parliament ending the 13-year long single Party rule of conservative and Islamic-leaning Justice and Development Party (AK Party). Though AK Party emerged as the single largest party and managed to win 258 seats in 550-seat parliament yet it was 18 seats short of simple majority. AK Party also saw its share of votes fall by nine percentage points as compared with the result of the 2011 general election. It went down from approximately 50 per cent to 41 per cent of votes.
Though slightly, the main opposition, Kemalist/secularist Republican People’s Party (CHP) also saw a little decline in its vote share. In contrast, the parties with focal point on Turkish and Kurdish nationalism increased their share of votes. However, this increase was modest for the Turkish Nationalist Movement Party (MHP). It was spectacular for the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), which more than doubled its share of the vote. Pro-Kurdish parties have traditionally hovered around 6 per cent, but the HDP received over 13 per cent of the votes in the June 7 election. With this, for the first time any pro-Kurdish party crossed the 10 % election threshold.
It is the first time in the history of Turkey since it became multi-party democracy in 1946 that the country is forced to head towards snap elections due to the failure of forming a coalition government. The constitution decrees that in the transitional period, the country should be ruled by an interim caretaker government in which parliamentary parties participate depending on the respective seats each of them carries inside parliament. The portfolios of justice, interior affairs, foreign affairs and transport are however to be held by the independents or technocrats.
As expected, with the political divergence and uncompromising attitude of both, the CHP and the MHP refused to take part in the caretaker government that the incumbent Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu, leader of the AK Party, was instructed to form. The CHP and MHP were also trying to manoeuvre electoral benefit by creating an embarrassment to the AK Party in the eyes of the Turkish electorate by restricting the caretaker government to cabinet ministers from the AK Party and the pro-Kurdish HDP (blamed to be the political arm of PKK) at a time when the war is raging once again between the Turkish state and Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) militants in the east and southeast of the country.
To much humiliation to MHP and its nonflexible chairman Devlet Bahçeli, there was divide in the party, Tuğrul Türkeş party’s deputy chairman, MP from Ankara and son of the legendary founder and honorary leader of the party Alparslan Türkeş, broke ranks and joined the caretaker government as one of the deputy Prime Minister. Turkeş’ acceptance to join the interim government is considered a master stroke by political pundits, crafted by none other than President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. In addition, PM Davutoğlu gave a ministerial portfolio to the former leader of the Grand Unity Party Yalçın Topçu, who represents the conservative religious faction within Turkish nationalism.
With the formation of the caretaker government, the country passes through another phase in the agenda of the transitional period and does indeed enter into the early elections mode. Yet, the question that lingers on Turkey’s political horizon is whether a new set of elections will deliver stability, certainty and the most importantly a single party majority to AK Party as desired by the undisputed leader of the party, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan who himself got elected President in the first-ever direct election in August last year.
Right before the start of official election campaign, AK Party’s fifth Ordinary General Congress in Ankara on Saturday saw incumbent Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu re-elected unopposed as the party chairman. The party congress provided an opportunity for the party to revisit its discourse, revise its agenda and reflect on the strategic mistakes it made in its last election campaign. In a major intraparty decision, Davutoğlu has also announced the suspension of a longstanding principle which prevented AK Party members from holding a post for more than three terms.
Though it is evident that AK Party will contest the upcoming elections on the agenda of political stability, curbing on escalated terrorism and steady economic growth, it will be a grand opportunity for the Party to rebuild its relationship with the electorate and regain the lost ground among the swing voters, particularly those who decided to desert it during the June 7 election. Failing that, the outcome of the next elections will not be different from the previous one.