Hopes for grand coalition falter amid meddling by President Erdoğan

Interim PM Davutoğlu (R) shakes hands with the leader of the main opposition CHP, Kılıçdaroğlu, prior to their coalition meeting in Ankara on Aug. 10. (Photo: AP)

August 12, 2015, Wednesday/ 18:34:22/ TODAY'S ZAMAN / ANKARA

On the eve of final talks for a coalition government between leaders of the ruling and main opposition parties, hopes for a coalition have greatly faded due apparently to the intervention of the president.

The leader of the main opposition Republican People's Party (CHP), Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, is alleged to have said the parties' efforts to create a coalition government would not bear fruit, blaming President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan who he accused of being against a coalition from the start.

“In my opinion, there will not be a coalition [between the two parties],” the Cumhuriyet daily quoted Kılıçdaroğlu as saying on Wednesday.

According to the daily's report, the main opposition leader expressed his opinion during a visit on Tuesday by representatives of several professional chambers including the Turkish Medical Association (TTB) and the Confederation of Revolutionary Workers' Unions (DİSK). During the meeting, Kılıçdaroğlu reportedly added: “We will announce it on Thursday.”

The CHP leader will meet on Thursday with Ahmet Davutoğlu, the leader of the interim Justice and Development Party (AK Party) government for a final round of talks that will reveal whether the two parties will join forces in a grand coalition.

According to the report, the CHP leader maintained that President Erdoğan's negative attitude towards a coalition government is the reason why efforts would not prove to be successful. Erdoğan, who previously headed AK Party governments for a decade before being elected president last August, is still a powerful figure in the party.

Since the June 7 election, in which no party secured enough votes to form a single government, Erdoğan has implicitly made it clear in his statements that he favors a snap election, apparently in the hope that “his” AK Party may once again return to single-party governance.

The AK Party, which got almost 41 percent of the vote in the election, currently has 258 deputies.

Recent voter intention polls indicate around a 2 percent increase in the AK Party vote, which may be enough for it to secure power as a single party.

Conflict in long-term coalition vision

Despite the ongoing negotiations, it has been widely speculated that the two parties have so far failed to reach a consensus on a great deal of issues. On Wednesday, Reuters cited an anonymous senior CHP official as saying that the CHP leader would be “handing out election brochures at a meeting” on the same day as making a final bid to forge a coalition government.

“The AKP [another way of saying the AK Party] does not want to form a government with us. We say 'let's run the country together', they say 'no, don't interfere'," the news agency quoted the CHP official as saying.

The CHP official, whom Reuters referred to as “he,” also said the AK Party favors a short-term coalition, while the CHP is pushing for a government with a vision to serve for a full four-year term.

The CHP leader joined his party deputies at CHP headquarters at around 1 p.m. on Wednesday, shortly before the Reuters' report was released.

President Erdoğan's address to mukhtars (those administratively in charge of neighborhoods in towns and villages) from around the country at the presidential palace on Wednesday once again suggested an early election is his number one choice.

Although he said he hopes the ongoing talks for a coalition government will be concluded in a way that is beneficial for the country, Erdoğan underlined that the principles of the parties in coalition talks need to match, implying that they do not. Unless the principles of both sides match, forging a coalition would come to mean committing suicide, said Erdoğan, adding that no party should be expected to take such a step.

Should the AK Party and the CHP fail to strike a deal, an early election, sometime in November, is highly probable.

Before the final meeting planned for Thursday, Davutoğlu and Kılıçdaroğlu also met on Monday following five rounds of preliminary coalition talks between delegations of the two parties over the past few weeks.

Davutoğlu paid an unexpected visit to Erdoğan in the presidential palace on Tuesday.

Before meeting with Erdoğan, Davutoğlu told reporters that nobody should expect a historic announcement to follow Thursday's meeting, encouraging claims that the talks will fail.

According to the Constitution, the president can call an early election if a government is not formed 45 days after the election of all members of the Speaker's Council in Parliament.

The time allotted for coalition talks will end on Aug. 23. And the 18-member Speaker's Council was formed on July 9, immediately after which Erdoğan gave Davutoğlu the mandate to form a government. Davutoğlu is the interim prime minister and had been prime minister from autumn 2014 until the June election.

Erdoğan told reporters late on Tuesday that he would not extend the 45-day deadline for coalition talks, which has been widely perceived as a desire for an early election. "I don't have the authority to stretch out the 45-day [deadline]," Erdoğan said in response to a question as to whether he would use his initiative to extend the deadline.

Stressing that the country should not be left without a government, Erdoğan also told reporters that Davuoğlu could meet with the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) before the end of the deadline. Erdoğan's remark strongly suggests that Erdoğan feels that talks with the main opposition CHP are doomed to failure.

Should the AK Party and CHP leaders fail to strike a bargain, the AK Party is also expected to knock on the MHP's door for coalition talks, which would leave no time for the CHP leader to also get a mandate to try his chance with the other parties.

Özel: Erdoğan can stretch 45-day coalition deadline

Özgür Özel, a CHP parliamentary group deputy chairman, has challenged Erdoğan's argument that he is not authorized to stretch out the 45-day deadline maintaining that Erdoğan's statement is indicative of a plan he has in mind.

Arguing that the article related to the authority of the president is one of the few flexible articles in the Constitution, Özel told the Cihan news agency on Wednesday: “The fact that the president said he cannot stretch out the [deadline as per the] article reveals that he has put into practice a plan in his head.”

The article in question, Article 116 of the Constitution, says: “In cases where the Council of Ministers fails to receive a vote of confidence under Article 110 or falls by a vote of no-confidence under Article 99 or 111, if a new Council of Ministers cannot be formed within 45 days or fails to receive a vote of confidence, the President of the Republic, in consultation with the Speaker of the Grand National Assembly [Parliament] of Turkey, may decide to renew the elections.”

As the CHP leader's meeting with CHP deputies continued, Özel briefly left the meeting and held a press conference at the party headquarters.

Although not dismissing the possibility of a coalition with the AK Party's forming after Thursday's talks, Özel accused the AK Party of not being ready to share power with a coalition partner. The AK Party's attitude during the coalition talks is to not share power or give as little a share as possible, Özel told reporters.

Underlining that the CHP wants to be part of a coalition with the AK Party with all its heart, Özel said the CHP would not accept such a situation purely to gain positions in government without being given much responsibility for the future direction of the country.

There were some expectations that the two sides could make a positive announcement about a coalition following Monday's talks. The postponement of the final decision on whether to forge a coalition government to Thursday may be an indication that neither party wants to be perceived as the one that left the table.

Özel made clear in the press conference that the CHP would hold Davutoğlu responsible should Thursday's meeting fail. He said, “Mr. Chairman [Kılıçdaroğlu] said [in the meeting] that we will ask Davutoğlu to explain why if no coalition [government] is forged tomorrow.”

Özel also said the AK Party may, in case the talks fail, also negotiate with the MHP.

The AK Party's Central Executive Board (MYK) met on Wednesday. It has been widely argued since the general election that Davutoğlu is more inclined to forge a coalition with the CHP, while President Erdoğan and some figures within the AK Party who are close to the president have been pushing for an early election.

The Hürriyet daily said on Monday that Davutoğlu is in possession of two reports, each of which describes positive and negative scenarios about a potential coalition with the CHP and an early election.

According to the daily's report, one of the reports says if the AK Party could get in an early election some 5,000 votes more than it got in the last election in some provinces, the party could get nearly 25 additional seats in Parliament. Having 258 deputies, the AK Party needs no more than an additional 18 deputies to form a single-party government.

Generally speaking, a total of 276 seats, representing an absolute majority in the 550-seat Parliament, are required to form a government.

It is widely argued that the ruling party may be hoping to increase its votes in an early election among nationalist voters as the Turkish Armed Forces (TSK) started to hit the terrorist Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) for the first time since a settlement process was launched at the end of 2012 in a bid to resolve the country's Kurdish issue.