Turkish update
Here's a brief update on events after a question from a dear reader. Yesterday, the Constitutional Court cancelled the first round of the presidential election because two-thirds of MPs had abstained and so there were insufficient votes to achieve the quorum of 367.Prime Minister Erdogan's party, the AKP, responded to the Court’s verdict by calling for early elections on either June 24 or July 1. It also proposed to amend the Constitution in order to let the voters (not the parliament) elect the president, reduce the minimum age required to run for MP to 25 from 30 and reduce the parliamentary term to four years from the current five. The ANAP leader Mumcu welcomed Erdogan’s proposals and said that they would support the proposed constitutional amendments. This should ensure the two-thirds majority needed to approve the changes as the AKP has 353 seats and the ANAP has 20. The main opposition party CHP is not backing them.
However, constitutional changes must be approved by the president but the current president Sezer’s term in office expires on May 16. Some legal experts are arguing that it will be impossible to amend the constitution and change the entire political system in quite fundamental ways in the run up to general elections.
The problem is this: the military wants to maintain a secular state but if it were to exercise another coup to achieve that aim, hopes of EU membership would be scuppered in the short-term. Let's hope it's achieved by an election instead.
posted by Whispering Walls at 1:34 pm
4 Comments:
You see, I can't help but think you would be better as a career diplomat sorting out these little local difficulties, or possibly as the head of the Foreign Office or MI5/6. They might even let you have some hunky Secret Agents to play with...
Or maybe you should help organise a military coup d'etat in London and install Boris Johnson as our leader. Reporting to the Queen, of course.
Let us hope so, indeed. Thank you for the clear explanation of the situation as I had not read about it in-depth elsewhere.
Hope you had a good break, WW.
One hates to say it, but this has the look of an applecart which could be upset all too easily. I do find it rather disappointing that even papers like the Guardian and Telegraph are cutting back on foreign bureaux to try and pay for star columnists like Boris 'quarter a mill' Johnson.
Nothing against good 'ol Boris, and the figures on the website certainly shows he's pulling in the punters. But sadly culling foreign journalists is the price of that extravagance, and I often feel that I should know far more about what is going on in the world than I do reading today's daily papers.
One could argue that with internet links to all the news agencies this is an expense they can ill afford.
But as your updates have shown, one cannot substitute the experience of having boots [kitten heels?] on the ground.
Hmm.. Turkish geezer appears to have taken a hint, which is more than can be said for own esteemed leader.
That said, he has now completed his main 'legacy' project over in Northern Ireland.
Watch this space..
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