Reuters is reporting this morning that coalition talks between the AKP and the CHP have failed, suggesting that snap elections are on the horizon:
REUTERS – Coalition talks between Turkey’s ruling AK Party and the main opposition CHP ended in failure on Thursday, senior officials on both sides told Reuters, setting the stage for a snap election later this year and sending Turkish assets tumbling.
The AKP could now try to strike a coalition agreement with the nationalist opposition MHP, but a senior ruling party official said the chances of such a deal were “very slim” and that a snap election in November was a high probability.
Davutoglu has until Aug. 23 to find a junior coalition partner or President Tayyip Erdogan, who founded the AKP, could call a snap election.
The MHP has said it does not favor a coalition with the ruling party, but has hinted it could support a minority AKP government in the short term in return for a new election.
Erdogan has made clear he favors single-party government in Turkey and has made no secret of his ambition to change the constitution and create an executive presidency, virtually impossible without a strong AKP majority.
Here’s the bottom line. Erdogan and the AKP never wanted a coalition government in the first place. They’ve certainly tried to make it look like they were genuinely interested in making a coalition work, but that was just kabuki theater. Any coalition with the AKP would be a weak coalition guaranteeing that much of what Erdogan wanted to do would not get done. Why would dictator-wannabe Erdogan go for a weak coalition when he could hold the elections again and increase the odds of an AKP majority rule?
So now that Turkey is virtually headed back to elections in November, the question I contend isn’t whether the AKP will win back their majority, but how big their majority will be. In previous elections in Turkey, the AKP has either won a 3/5ths majority outright or been very close, as in 2011 when they were only four seats away from it. So given all that’s happened with the previous election and the need for a strong government in Turkey that won’t happen via a coalition, I think it’s very possible Erdogan could end up getting the 3/5ths majority he needs to hold a referendum to change the Turkish Constitution.
And once they change the constitution, Erdogan becomes the Sultan of Turkey and the resurrection of his new Ottoman Turkey will nearly be a done deal.