Türkİye

Senior Turkish politician sees coalition possibility

Deputy chairman of Justice and Development (AK) Party says coalition likely if results of election rerun are unchanged

28.08.2015 - Update : 28.08.2015
Senior Turkish politician sees coalition possibility

By Humeyra Atilgan Buyukovali

ISTANBUL

 A coalition of the Justice and Development (AK) Party and the National Movement Party (MHP) is the most likely outcome if November’s election replicates the results of five months earlier, the deputy chairman of the AK Party said Wednesday.

Yasin Aktay said the coalition talks following the June 7 election, which saw the AK Party placed first followed by the Republican People’s Party (CHP), showed the two could not reach a consensus -- leaving the MHP as the AK Party’s preferred partner.

"The message [of the June 7 election] was compromise and we tried to achieve it,” Aktay told a briefing for foreign journalists in Istanbul.

“However, after talks with CHP it appeared that it was impossible to make a coalition with them because the voters of both sides are radically against a coalition of the AK Party and the CHP.”

Outlined potential scenarios from the Nov. 1 rerun of the June general election, which saw no party win a simple majority, Aktay said a 45 percent vote for the AK Party would allow it to form a single party government and continue its 13-year rule.

“Another possibility is having almost the same results,” he said. “If we get almost the same results it is not a problem. It will legitimize the coalition possibilities and a coalition will be strongly approved.”

Referring to AK Party supporters, he added: “They said 'no' to coalition either with the CHP or the MHP. But if we get the same results, that will not mean the same thing. Voters will agree on a coalition and parties will also think in a different way.”

Aktay, who heads the AK Party’s foreign affairs section, said his personal preference would be a coalition with the CHP as the days of coalition discussions with the secularist party produced “very good ground to form a government”.

Discussing the chances of an improved vote for the AK Party, which first came to power in 2002, Aktay said the party expected to win more than 43 percent of votes -- picking up voters who did not cast a ballot in June as well as winning votes from the MHP and the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP).

The final possibility would be that the AK Party sees a reduction in its support, he added, without elaborating on how this would translate into forming a government.

Tackling President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s role in the forthcoming campaign -- a contentious issue in June with opposition parties complaining that the former AK Party chairman violated the president’s traditional impartiality -- Aktay said Erdogan’s strong leadership was a unifying factor for the AK Party.

And he reiterated the party’s commitment to ushering in a presidential system to replace Turkey’s parliamentary structure. “The presidential system is, sooner or later, the best system for Turkey,” he said.

Asked how the renewal of the Kurdish conflict in southern and eastern Turkey would affect voting for the AK Party, which oversaw attacks on the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) following the June 20 suicide bombing in Suruc, Aktay said: "We do not want to calculate the impact of soldiers' deaths on the AK party. It is shameful, whether the impact is positive or negative."

More than 60 soldiers and police have been martyred since the Suruc attack while the military claims around 800 PKK deaths.

Atkay, a lawmaker for Siirt province in Turkey’s southeast, claimed he had received complaints of intimidation from voters in the region who felt coerced into voting for the HDP.

He accused the party of supporting the PKK, considered a terrorist organization in Turkey, the U.S. and EU. “There is not enough distance between terrorism and their policies,” he said. “They are not PKK-free and are not violence-free.”

Atkay said it would be “very difficult” to return to the “solution process” -- talks officially launched in 2013 between the government and the PKK to end the 30-year Kurdish insurgency -- due to the breakdown of trust.

Operations against the PKK in northern Iraq were launched at the same time as airstrikes against Daesh in Syria and Aktay said Turkey was ready to play its part in the U.S.-led coalition against the extremist group.

The details of Turkey’s role in the anti-Daesh alliance were finalized this week.

However, Aktay said both Daesh and the Kurdish-Syrian Democratic Union Party (PYD) -- the PKK-linked group whose forces have played a leading role in combating Daesh on the ground -- were instruments of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in the country’s civil war.

(Published on, 26 Ağu 2015 18:24)

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