Searching for Turkey’s Next President

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By DAVID ROMANO

In August of this year, Turkish citizens will for the first time vote in a new president. In the past, Turkey’s presidents were selected by its Parliament, with the Turkish military exercising a de facto veto over the choice. In Turkey’s parliamentary electoral system, the office of the President acted as a check and balance on the power of the elected politicians, vetoing problematic legislation and using other presidential powers to sometimes restrain government excess. Like in other parliamentary democracies, the idea was to try and select a president who could stand above the political fray and guard the interests of the state and all its people.

This came to an end in 2007, when the military tried to block the Justice and Development Party’s (AKP) nominee for President. Prime Minister Erdogan responded to the threatened military coup by calling a snap election, which his party won handily. In the face of a renewed mandate from the people, Turkish generals found themselves unable to move against Mr. Erdogan. The Turkish judiciary may have felt likewise, as shortly afterwards it narrowly voted against closing the AKP for anti-secular activities. The AKP’s Abdullah Gul was thus duly appointed President of the Republic. President Gul by most accounts tried to serve as everyone’s President, rather than just the leader of those who voted for his party. He even dissented with Prime Minister Erdogan on a few issues, such as banning on Twitter.

On the whole, however, Mr. Gul failed to restrain or check the power of Mr. Erdogan and the party from which he came. Every time something frustrates Prime Minister Erdogan, he directs his party to invent new legislation to remove the irritant. When the judiciary and police find evidence of corruption in top members of Mr. Erdogan’s government and family, new laws are passed requiring that the government be informed ahead of time of any proposed investigations of its activities. When leaked recordings likewise indicate government corruption, laws are drawn up and duly passed to block Youtube and other parts of the Internet to where the material is posted. When the Turkish intelligence agency’s (MIT) activities are questioned and investigated, regulations are changed to make the institution only answerable to the Prime Minister. When mainstream media that potential AKP voters might read says anything critical of the government, Mr. Erdogan’s business friends are directed to purchase the offending newspapers or television channels and fire “problematic journalists.” In all these ways and more, the AKP government expands its autocratic power, free from the objections of an AKP President of the Republic.

This dynamic makes the upcoming presidential election very important for Turkey’s opposition parties. The end of Mr. Gul’s term as President and the direct election of a replacement offer a chance to rein in the runaway train of AKP power. Most everyone assumes Mr. Erdogan will announce his candidacy for the post of President shortly. If elected, he will then presumably move to strengthen Presidential powers, using a compliant AKP dominated parliament to pass necessary legal amendments. Given Mr. Erdogan’s penchant for polarizing society and losing his temper, however, he hardly seems like the ideal head of state for many of his people. Although committed AKP supporters may find themselves perplexed by the title of this column, others desperately wish to see Mr. Erdogan’s (often angry) visage less often on their television screens.

The challenge of opposition parties, however, is to find a consensus candidate to defeat Mr. Erdogan in the presidential election. I spent the last few days in the Turkish Parliament speaking to opposition party leaders, and they insist that they are willing to work with anyone who shares their goal of denying Mr. Erdogan the Presidency. High level opposition members of Parliament from different parties assured me that they want to find someone agreeable to everyone -- the Kemalist Republican People's Party (CHP), the Right-wing National Action Party (MHP), the Left-wing People’s Democratic Party (HDP – which the pro-Kurdish party joined recently) and even AKP supporters worried about Mr. Erdogan’s increasingly autocratic tendencies (these could continue to vote for the AKP in other elections, but not for President).

Such a person will be hard to find in the time remaining before the election. They would need some name recognition with Turkey’s masses and a reputation for professionalism, a high regard for the rule of law and an honest reputation. What’s more, they would need all these qualities without any well-known public position on some of Turkey’s most burning issues: a candidate supportive of Kurdish rights would alienate the MHP, while one too focused on security and a unified Turkey would alienate liberals and Kurds. Too secular of a candidate would alienate religious voters, while too Sunni a candidate would alienate Alevis and secularists. If such a person exists, I have no doubt that more than half of Turkey’s population is anxious to meet them. - See more at: http://rudaw.net/english/opinion/29052014#sthash.AHubW03L.dpuf