Erdoğan’s push for early election is ‘disrespectful of voters’ choice’

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan poses with students during a graduation ceremony in Ankara on June 11. Although he called for a swift formation of a coalition government, Erdoğan is believed to be pushing for an early election. (Photo: Reuters)

June 12, 2015, Friday/ 16:40:36/ ESAT ÖZEN / ISTANBUL

The president calling for an early election in an effort to restore his weakened power when Parliament has just achieved the broadest representation of Turkish society, including Kurds and minorities, despite a high national threshold would be nothing but a betrayal of the will of the Turkish people, experts have said.

Doğu Ergil, a professor of political science, says politicians ought to get the message from voters that it is time for a compromise. “When the anti-democratic threshold was exceeded, a broader representation emerged [in Parliament],” he said.

He said that disregarding the people's choice by calling an early election would be tantamount to a betrayal of the will of the voters. He further underlined that President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan should remove himself from the political process so that coalition tasks will proceed in a healthier environment.

Until now the ruling Justice and Development Party (AK Party) has benefited enormously from the 10 percent election threshold that was introduced by the military regime following a coup in 1980. This was most notable when, in 2002, all five parties that had passed the threshold in the 1999 elections, as well as two other major parties, failed to pass the threshold, allowing the AK Party to field 364 deputies out of a 550-deputy Parliament with only 33.4 percent of the popular vote.

One of the most criticized aspects of the 2002 general election was the fact that 46.33 percent of the valid votes, or over 14.5 million people, were without representation in Parliament.

The level of representation reached 85 percent in the 2011 election when three parties entered Parliament, as well as deputies from the Peace and Democracy Party (BDP) -- the predecessor of the pro-Kurdish Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) -- who ran as independents.

In Sunday's election, all four major parties entered Parliament with 97 percent of voters represented, the highest percentage since 1938.

Ersin Kalaycıoğlu, another professor of political science, also referred to a call for an early election as an injustice to the voters. “The reason they are not able to form a coalition now is because of the president and interim prime minister Ahmet Davutoğlu,” he explained.

Recalling that Erdoğan and Davutoğlu had insulted people, called the opposition illegitimate and even declared them to be illegal organizations that are supported by terrorist groups, Kalaycıoğlu said such a harsh discourse had eliminated the coalition option from the table. “There is no problem among the people. But those who were elected are problematic,” he noted, adding that compromise is an exception in Turkish politics.

Kalaycıoğlu also stated that Erdoğan received a vote of no confidence on June 7 because he had turned the parliamentary elections into a referendum on his presidency.

“The president is looking at the opposition parties as enemies. A coalition would not work,” he added.

In a joint statement released by High Representative of the EU for Foreign Affairs Federica Mogherini and Commissioner for European Neighbourhood Policy and Enlargement Johannes Hahn on Monday, it was stated that the all major parties obtaining representation in the new Parliament is “particularly important.”

On Friday a senior AK Party official involved in party strategy anonymously told Reuters: "Erdoğan is giving soft messages now, and will for a while longer, but we will see whether it continues. Erdoğan wants people to see that the option of a coalition won't work. Efforts to form a stable government will truly be pursued, but I don't think they can be realized. I believe an early election is first in the list of scenarios right now."

A government whistleblower tweeting under the pseudonym Fuat Avni claimed on Tuesday that Erdoğan will call for an early election in an effort to win more votes on the back of fresh violence that he hopes will push the pro-Kurdish HDP out of Parliament.

Avni exposed the plan that was allegedly determined in a recent meeting Erdoğan had with close advisors to establish a post-election strategy. According to Avni, Erdoğan has ruled out the possibility of a functioning coalition government and he plans to go to early elections to make up for the loss his former party suffered in Sunday's general election.

“Two options were assessed. The first priority is to prevent a coalition from forming, then to go to an early election,” Avni wrote, adding that if this fails, a coalition with the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) is Erdoğan's second option.

“Whatever happens, develop contingencies to force [political parties into] snap elections,” Erdoğan told his advisors, according to Avni. The president also asked that should the AK Party form a coalition with the MHP, the government become a caretaker government and take the country to early elections.

According to Avni, Erdoğan and his advisors also agreed not to voice plans for an early election publicly and to downplay the idea in the hope that the opposition would be caught unprepared.

Erdoğan's public remarks on Thursday, made after nearly a four-day absence from the public eye following Sunday's parliamentary election, seemed to corroborate Avni's accounts. Speaking at an international student graduation ceremony at the ATO Congresium in Ankara, Erdoğan said that those who leave Turkey without a government will not be able to account for themselves before history or the people. He urged all political parties to work quickly to form a new government and to leave their egos aside.

Erdoğan believes, according to Avni, that the MHP will lose some 4 percent of votes in the snap election, assuming that MHP voters will defect to the AK Party, viewing it as the only means of thwarting the rise of the pro-Kurdish HDP, which received 13 percent of the vote on Sunday, securing more seats in the new Parliament than the MHP.

Avni also revealed that Erdoğan plans to provoke violence in the predominantly Kurdish Southeast by deploying cells of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) that are controlled by Turkey's notorious intelligence agency, the National Intelligence Organization (MİT).

“ISIL cells under the control of MİT will be activated to provoke the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK),” he wrote, also indicating that Hakan Fidan, the head of MİT, will be tasked with making that happen. Senior members of law enforcement agencies in the Southeast have allegedly been specially selected to comply with this plot, while operatives planted in the Kurdistan Communities Union (KCK), an umbrella organization that includes the PKK, will be asked to stage violent attacks.

Avni said the bloody events will take place in southeastern cities, including Cizre and Yüksekova. Erdoğan's hope is that the HDP will not be able to pass the 10 percent threshold again if violence is renewed in the country, leaving the AK Party, the second largest party in the region, to steal some 70 deputies from the HDP in the early elections.

The whistleblower wrote that the PKK giving up its arms altogether would be Erdoğan's worst nightmare, foiling his plans.

Erdoğan is also said to have dismissed concerns about risks expressed by his advisors, saying the AK Party has already been forced into coalition talks after losing its majority in Parliament, and that any further drop would not make much of a difference.

Regarding a meeting on Wednesday with Deniz Baykal, a deputy from the Republican People's Party (CHP), Avni said the president's real goal was to spark conflict within the CHP. The idea was suggested by his advisors, who said the meeting with Baykal, a former CHP leader who had a rift with the current leader Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, would inflame tension between factions within the CHP.

Avni also predicted that Erdoğan will soon announce his opposition to a minority government led by the CHP, and that the president's propaganda machine will start a negative campaign against a CHP and MHP coalition, mostly on social media. Paid social media users, also known as trolls, who will pretend to be MHP supporters would be mobilized in such a campaign in an effort to dissuade MHP leadership from entering a coalition with the CHP. The campaign would also be conducted in such a way as to facilitate an AK Party-MHP coalition.

The whistleblower said an AK Party coalition with the MHP would be a tactical one, as Erdoğan plans to make the nationalists the scapegoat of the country's problems before calling for an early election.

According to Avni, Erdoğan also asked his team to find legal means for him to take control of the AK Party in the event of an early election, after being informed by advisors that Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu performed poorly in Sunday's elections and that if he does not lead the party, former president Abdullah Gül may seize leadership. Erdoğan reportedly also asked his legal team to find out who would take over the presidency if he were to step down and head the AK Party.

The legal options were reportedly presented in a report prepared by Veysel Bektaş, the deputy director of the personnel department of the Turkish Justice Ministry, submitted on Tuesday to Erdoğan's chief of staff.

Keywords: Recep Tayyip Erdoğan , early election , Ahmet Davutoğlu