If we think by keeping our wits about us, we see that there is no point in holding two elections in the same year. I guess this is a first in the history of Turkish Republic. I mean, there were times when people sided against each other –especially during ‘70s, after the 1960 coup–, but holding two elections in the same year, just because some people don’t like the results and because a coalition couldn’t have been formed is happening for the first time.
We wrote on this matter at length; especially on Erdoğan and AKP’s purpose of coming to power again by using the Kurdish question. However, at this point, we have to look at this matter from different perspectives.
Now, the meetings for forming a coalition remained inconclusive. President Erdoğan didn’t assign the task of forming a government to CHP, which is the second most voted political party, and his reason for not doing this was very personal (they don’t know where his presidential palace is) and decided to hold an early election by himself. By doing this, he annulled the existing Grand National Assembly of Turkey, which is the parliament that is elected by people’s votes. This is an important and vital development regarding our history of democracy, though we couldn’t have contemplated on it enough in the middle of all this uproar. It seems that everything has been done in accordance with legal and constitutional procedures (though they pushed the limits a little), but let me ask: Did this Grand National Assembly of Turkey deserve to be annulled?
In some respects, I mean ironically speaking, it did. After all, there are 80 people from HDP who got into the parliament and some of them are Armenians, Romans and Assyrians; moreover, some of these Armenians are in bad with the current official perspective. Of course the state couldn’t tolerate something like this; it couldn’t live with such a parliament for years. Accordingly, if we look at the matter from the traditional perspective of Turkish state, it is no surprise that a “coup” was staged against such a parliament.
I am speaking ironically of course, but that's just the way it is. Of course the Turkish state tradition, which is manifested in Erdoğan himself, doesn’t put it that way, but it still tries to annihilate the atmosphere that is reflected in the parliament, by raising difficulties regarding the coalition meetings, trying to oppress the ones who want peace, putting the methods (oppression, detention, arrestment) it knows very well into operation, and also threatening the media in the meantime.
The state reacted in this way and last week, we had a new issue to talk about: forming a government that will be in charge until the election. For this parliament, Prime Minister Davutoğlu was chosen once again and, as the law requires, he offered ministries to the MPs from the political parties that got into the parliament.
Since CHP inconceivably refused to participate in this –seemingly two-month– government, their first response was “thanks, but no thanks.” MHP has been refusing everything from the beginning, so it was obvious that they will say no. However, we saw that Tuğrul Türkeş accepted to be a minister. On Wednesday, we witnessed that Türkeş’s response came like a bombshell for MHP, since they have been vigorously refusing everything regarding this new government. There are two reasons for this effect: firstly, Tuğrul Türkeş is the son of the Chief (Başbuğ) Alpaslan Türkeş. Secondly, this was really surprising for MHP, because ignoring the decisions of the leader is not hold with MHP. Probably, either Tuğrul Türkeş will resign or they will read him out of MHP, but this issue will continue to shake up MHP anyway.
The people that were chosen from HDP are also interesting; Levent Tüzel, Müslüm Doğan and Ali Haydar Konca were offered to become ministers. Since HDP want to participate in the temporary government –it is their right and also it is reasonable thing to do for HDP–, we are expecting that these three MPs will accept the offer. However, on this point, it is really remarkable that Davutoğlu has chosen the “western” MPs in HDP. Of course there is nothing wrong with these offers, but it can be said that the will of the voters is purposely ignored a bit.
Probably, independent deputies or people outside the parliament will receive offers to replace the MPs from CHP and MHP who refused the offers. This temporary parliament will probably start working before long, since there won’t be a vote of confidence.
All fine and well, but where are we heading toward? I mean, there will be an election that will be hold with this government and should we expect that this election will change anything? Probably we shouldn’t expect much…
We pointed out that AKP has reasons for holding a new election in addition to its problems with HDP. Well, December 17-25 issue is one of the most important ones. Last week, CHP tabled a motion for conducting a parliamentary investigation against Erdoğan and 4 former ministers who were involved in corruption. It is almost impossible for this motion to be put on the parliament’s agenda and voted in this period. However, it is obvious that this issue will be a burden for AKP in the upcoming period. The one who doesn’t prefer to get rid of this burden is Erdoğan, of course.
On the other hand, the war doesn’t go as AKP planned. Throughout the week, we witnessed people lashing out at AKP during the funerals of the martyrs. It seems that AKP’s war policy somehow doesn’t affect nationalists either.
In short, AKP, or put it more precisely Erdoğan, will hold a new election by thinking that this their only way out, but it seems that things won’t go as they planned or hoped.
