Erdogan’s Constitutional Crisis
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s initiative to change Turkey’s constitution to support a presidential, rather than parliamentary, system, is encountering some opposition, writes Tulin Daloglu.
How can something backed by consensus go so wrong? Look no further than to Turkey’s drafting of a new constitution.
Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, speaking on Jan. 30 at the weekly meeting of his Justice and Development Party (AKP), told the assembled lawmakers that if the parliamentary commission tasked with drafting the constitution fails to finalize its work by the end of March, “the AK Party will bring its own work on this to the parliament's agenda.” He added, “If there is no compromise, we will submit the new constitution to a referendum.”
The AKP lacks enough votes in the 550-member parliament to put the proposed constitution to a referendum, so Erdogan must simply feel confident that his party continues to receive the support of at least 50% of the nation after a decade in power. The last time Erdogan chose to put constitutional amendments to a referendum, in September 2010, 58% voted in favor. Since that time, although the AKP won the most recent general election with enough of a majority to form a single-party government, it lost seats in the parliament. The party now has 326 seats, which is four shy of what it needs to call a referendum.
That aside, Turkey's opposition parties have sounded the alarm that Erdogan is trying to hijack the country's democracy. Speaking to al-Monitor, Atilla Kart, a member of the Constitutional Reconciliation Committee (CRC) and Republican People's Party (CHP) deputy from Konya, put it this way: “A dictator is attempting to nullify all the work we have done in the past 15 months. People need to react to this in the name of building consensus and peace.”
