Coalition would hit employment in Turkey: Parliament speaker

SİVAS – Doğan News Agency

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If Turkey is to be ruled by a coalition government then voters will find it difficult to “find jobs for their children,” Parliament Speaker İsmet Yılmaz has said in the Central Anatolian province of Sivas at a gathering of village heads. 

“If Turkey is to be ruled by a coalition government it will be hard for your children to find jobs,” Yılmaz said on Oct. 26, referring to the possibility that the Justice and Development Party (AKP) will be unable to form a single-party government after the Nov. 1 election.

He also said a coalition would make it “harder to care for disabled people and harder to hand out coal to the poor.”

The 1970s to the 1990s were “lost years” in Turkish history, Yılmaz added, stating that Turkey recorded substantial growth since the AKP came to power as a single-party in 2002.

“We shouldn’t waste 2016. But if we make the wrong choice, we will waste 2016 too. Turkey went through turbulent times during the 1990s,” Yılmaz said.

Turkey goes to the polls on Nov. 1 for the second time in less than six months after no coalition resulted from negotiations between political parties after the inconclusive June 7 election.