Government blackmailing voters with another election: CHP

ANKARA

DHA photo

A Justice and Development Party (AKP) official’s suggestion that Turkey will again head to the polls if the Nov. 1 polls do not produce a majority government are tantamount to blackmail of the country, the main opposition has said.

“If a result resembling the June 7 results emerges, I’m afraid there will again be talk of elections,” AKP Deputy Chair Mehmet Ali Şahin said recently.

Şahin’s remarks are meant to say that “We do not trust the people,” Republican People’s Party (CHP) leader Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu said in a live interview with NTV news channel on Oct. 27, also underlining that voters had clearly demanded a “conciliation” during the June 7 elections.

“Now, even before the voting starts, they say, ‘I will once more take you to the ballot box if you don’t give me the result I want.’ This is direct blackmail against the people,” Kılıçdaroğlu said.

“This is also meant to say: ‘I don’t trust the votes cast by people, I will respect you only if you give me the number of seats that I desire. Otherwise, I respect neither you nor the vote you cast.’ This is a very weighty statement,” he said. “This is something which should not exist in a democracy.”

In the June 7 parliamentary election, the AKP dropped to fewer than 276 seats in parliament, the number needed for a legislative majority. It had aimed for the 330 seats it needed in order to change the constitution without input from other parties and thus pave the way for a new presidential system equipped with more power and fewer checks and balances. 

After failing to secure a coalition, AKP leader Davutoğlu formed an interim cabinet ahead of the November re-run.

‘Turkey out of order’

Turkey is also experiencing one of its deepest crises because President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has been de facto using authorities which are not constitutionally granted to him while Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu has remained idle in exercising his independent will, Kılıçdaroğlu said.

“There is a growing perception that the institution of politics is not able to produce solutions,” Kılıçdaroğlu quoted himself as saying to Davutoğlu during their latest meeting, when he was asked during the interview whether he had doubts that Erdoğan would not permit the formation of a coalition government following the Nov. 1 snap elections.

The two leaders most recently met on Oct. 10 following a double suicide bomb attack in Ankara that killed at least 102 people and was blamed on the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL).

A politics based on lack of confidence and imposition is being built, Kılıçdaroğlu said.

“In my opinion, rather than Erdoğan, there is a need to question whether Davutoğlu has an independent will or not. Erdoğan has his own idiosyncratic understanding of politics. According to the constitution, he has no responsibility, and the prime minister is the one who should govern the country. The prime minister has no free will, how can he govern the country?” Kılıçdaroğlu asked. 

“Turkey is experiencing one of the deepest crises in the history of the republic. It’s not certain who is governing Turkey. Such a crisis of governance has happened to us for the first time. Now, the picture displays a Turkey which is out of order; this picture should urgently be corrected,” he said.