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February 10th, 2016 
Awake Goy Alwaght- Before the November 2015 parliamentary election, the Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has astutely stopped talking about increasing his presidential powers, however, following the elections, he very quietly shored up his mandates inside his party.
During the December 2015 meeting held by the Justice and Development Party, Erdogan has introduced some changes to the party, replacing 31 political figures out of 50 with those who he saw as being loyal to him, including his son-in-law who is now serving as the country’s minister of energy and natural resources. Erdogan and the media loyal to him have repeatedly promoted that the parliamentary system is completely outmoded in the country and that the state needed to replace it with a presidential system of governing. In his speech to the representatives of the civil societies of the country on January 28, 2016, the Turkish president has outlined the frames of his regime’s favored constitution, calling his government a presidential system.
According to Erdogan, the country’s fresh constitution must be based on the harmony and balance between the country’s powers and not on the strife and antithesis. He is talking about a secure and stable presidential system under the cover of which Turkey is protected even against the terror-related risks. These factors show that President Erdogan is keen to build an authoritarian constitutional regime.
But if he is in favor of establishing a democracy, he should not call the separation of powers as a conflict between them and should not reject it. Additionally, he is defending a concept which pushes to the sidelines all the mechanism of control and the balance of democracy. In fact, a regime in which the administrative power is the key for establishing a balance between other powers and all the executive powers are held by the president is not more than a dictatorship.
The “absolute stability” is alien to democracy and is close to dictatorship. He calls his authoritarian regime as national and natural. In his January 28 speech, he used the absolute stability concept when he said that they wanted a constitution which is based on the Turkish traditions. Everybody familiar with the history of Turkey knows well that such concepts as democracy, separation of powers, the rule of law, human rights, equality and diversity are borrowed from the West and what is special of Turkey and the Ottoman Empire is tyranny and monopoly of power. If today Erdogan talks about return to the Turkish traditions, the outcome in the future would be emergence of an authoritarian regime.
In crafting the constitutional framework he needs, we assume Erdogan will respect the valid clauses of the current constitution. But the Justice and Development Party does not have the three-fifths of the parliamentary majority to pass the amended version of the country’s constitution and put it to referendum. Meanwhile, Erdogan’s party should ensure that all the parties would vote in favor of the amendment. So, it should win support of at least 14 lawmakers of the opposition parties. Should Erdogan fails to find such 14 MPs, the only remaining way to win the majority for the constitution amendment would be holding snap elections. But it will not be easy to take this country, which went through two general elections in 2015, to a new election without convincing reasons.
It can be predicted that Erdogan’s government would launch the following scenarios in the upcoming days:
First Erdogan and his allied media would attempt to launch a campaign to convince the Sunni conservative voters that the presidential system is vital and necessary to the country. If the general polls show that the Sunni conservative voters have accepted that there is such a need for shifting to the presidential system, the campaign for early elections would follow soon. The regime will justify the need for an early election with the allegation that opposition parties are clogging up the country’s progress.
If Erdogan wants to take the country to the presidential system, the only way to steer clear of the snap polls is to get 14 opposition deputies to support the country’s constitution amendment plan. Therefore, a poll process in 2016 would determine the possibility of holding referendum or any other election processes.
Second, one of the most prominent elements of the Machiavellian game that will be played until the Turks go to the voting will be the threat of terror and chaos. In addition to ISIS’s threat, the only factor that keeps the terror threat in place is the war launched against Kurdish People’s Workers’ Party (PKK) on July 24, 2015, as the fear of chaos was the significant factor helped Erdogan’s party in November 1, 2015 parliamentary election recover the lost votes.
Due to the PKK’s slight regional power and the damages it is receiving in Turkey, Syria and Iraq, it is unlikely that Turkey’s war with the group goes lengthy. In addition, this war is, in fact, waged not to solve the Kurdish issue but to help shift the country to the presidential system.
All in all, the first man of Turkey, despite the ambitions he is striving to actualize, is not able to cure the country’s internal issues like the economic shocks and the Kurdish crisis. However, seeking to increase his power, Erdogan wants to beat the anti-constitution amendment parties through telling people that the current constitution cannot meet their demands.
By Alwaght
Source Article from http://theiranproject.com/blog/2016/02/10/why-erdogan-seeks-presidential-system-in-turkey/
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