ANKARA
Leaders of the Justice and Development (AK) Party and the Republican People's Party (CHP) will meet at the Prime Ministry in Ankara on Monday evening as the August 23 deadline to form a coalition looms close.
Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu and CHP leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu will hold a final discussion after their respective parties ended a series of "exploratory" talks over forming a coalition.
Talks between the AK party and the CHP have lasted for 35 hours during five separate sessions until August 3.
The first delegation-level talks between the two sides were held at the Ankara Palas State Guesthouse on July 24. Deputy Prime Minister Numan Kurtulmus, Culture Minister Omer Celik and Development Minister Cevdet Yilmaz represented AK Party at the meeting, while CHP Deputy Chairman Haluk Koc, Selin Sayek Boke, Faik Oztrak, Istanbul Lawmaker Akif Hamzacebi and Adviser to Chairman Rasim Bolucek represented the other side.
Monday's talks are expected to decide whether the AK Party-CHP coalition would be formed.
Meanwhile, Leader of Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) Devlet Bahceli issued a written statement on Monday, calling for an immediate formation of a coalition government between the AK Party and the CHP.
"These two parties should not avoid taking the big responsibility that history has put them in and should show their will and attention to form a government in line with national interests," Bahceli said.
He also urged the two parties to hold coalition negotiations "without behaving reluctantly or having imaginary discussions involving infertile standoffs".
Ozgur Ozel, CHP group deputy chairman, reiterated the 14 principles put forward by his party for a possible coalition with AK Party.
"The CHP is close to a coalition if its political counterpart comes close to the 14 principles; if they [AK Party] get away from these principles, we will also move away," Ozel told reporters at the parliament Monday.
These 14 principles include supremacy of law, electoral threshold, increase of minimum wage, president's tenure, new foreign policy, media freedom, a democratic constitution and bringing corruption cases to account.
Ozel said that the two parties were at a "critical phase" after the preliminary meetings ended, adding that the two sides would hold talks aimed at coalition protocol or part their ways and move on in accordance with their positions.
The leftist CHP, which came out second in the June 7 elections and currently has 131 seats in the parliament, seemed the most likely coalition partner, with the pro-Kurdish Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) ruling themselves out of any partnership with the AK Party.
In the case that the deadline expires without a government, either President Recep Tayyip Erdogan or the parliament may decide to hold a new election. If Erdogan issues the decision, the polling is supposed to be held in the first Sunday following a 90 day period starting from the end of the first deadline.
In the current set of circumstances, this scenario suggests renewed polling in November.
However, if the parliament makes the decision for a new election, then the Supreme Election Board can reduce the 90 day period by as much as half.
The last coalition talks in Turkey were made 16 years ago, when the Democratic Left Party (DSP) of the late premier Bulent Ecevit failed to win the majority at the general election on April 18, 1999.
Since 2002, the AK Party won three general elections to continue a single-party rule for well over a decade, which ended after the June 7 elections this year produced no majority government.
