ISTANBUL: On Friday, Tayyip Erdogan outlined his vision for a "pioneering new Turkey," promising to rewrite the constitution, forge a more prominent role on the international stage, and strengthen democracy if elected president.
The man who has dominated Turkish politics for more than a decade cast his bid for the presidency as part of a historic path of change, breaking the shackles of a status quo he claimed had held Turkey back for decades, launching his campaign for an August election he is almost certain to win.
The previous Turkey is long gone. The old Turkey's gates are locked. In a nearly two-hour speech, Erdogan, 60, told several thousand supporters in an Istanbul conference hall that "people's will to change has found its voice."
The confrontational state head has persevered through one of the most difficult times of his political vocation, confronting far reaching hostile to government fights and a debasement embarrassment over the course of the last year, as well as battling with an extending security danger presented by tumult in adjoining Iraq and Syria.
His opponents have expressed concern that his autocratic tendencies will only grow as he ascends to the presidency, which he claims will be given greater authority due to the direct nature of the vote. Previous presidents have been chosen by parliament, so his ascent appears to be inevitable.
“The president is head of the family and shouldn’t be a man with a stick beating everyone over the head,” said Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, the main challenger to Erdogan, 70, as he unveiled his strategy at a significantly more reserved event late on Thursday.
"We are in the 21st century. Ihsanoglu, a former head of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation and the joint candidate for the CHP, the party of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the founder of the modern secular Turkish state, and the nationalist MHP, stated, "The days of foot whipping are long gone."
Two polls conducted late last month suggested that Erdogan would win the election with ease in the first round on August 10, receiving 55-56% of the vote and a 20-point lead over his closest challenger, Ihsanoglu.
On August 24, a runoff vote will be held if no candidate receives more than 50% of the vote in the first round.
Erdogan has made it clear that he wants to establish an executive presidency in Turkey. To do so would necessitate a constitutional amendment, which his ruling AK Party could pass if it wins a larger majority of at least two thirds in the upcoming parliamentary elections.
When he ran for a third term as prime minister in 2011, Erdogan also made one of his most important promises: a new constitution. Despite numerous revisions, the current charter, which was the result of an army coup in 1980, still bears the marks of military tutelage.
The creation of an executive presidency, the definition of citizenship, and the protection of religious freedoms are just a few of Turkey's most contentious issues, and for two years, a cross-party panel tasked with making recommendations for a new charter failed to come to terms with its disagreements.
Since his middle right, Islamist-attached AK Party came to drive in 2002, Erdogan has fabricated enormous help among moderate Muslims, a significant number of them poor, who had felt treated as peasants in a mainstream society — devout ladies, for example, were barred from state structures since they wore headscarves.
Erdogan was convicted of Islamist activity and served a brief prison term in 1999. In the wake of assuming control over power just four years after the fact, he subdued a military that had considered itself to be last underwriter against Islamism and had brought down four legislatures in forty years.
He stated to the packed conference center on Friday, "Turkey is no longer a country where people wake up with the fear of a new crisis or coup every day, but a country where people look to the future of their kids with confidence."
Erdogan's tenure began after a period of unstable coalition governments and repeated economic crises, and since then, Turkey has experienced an unprecedented rise in prosperity.
Erdogan has also engaged in negotiations to end a three-decade insurgency in the predominantly Kurdish southeast, making peace with the Kurdish community, which makes up about a fifth of the population, more effectively than previous Turkish leaders.
Be that as it may, his incendiary language and hasty, totalitarian impulses when undermined — proved by restrictions on Facebook and Twitter during the defilement outrage recently and by a weighty police crackdown on fights the previous summer — have distanced huge sections of society and left Turkey profoundly spellbound.
The Alevi community, which is a religious minority in the predominantly Sunni Muslim nation, believes that he exhibits sectarian bias in both foreign policy and domestic policy. Western-oriented liberals are suspicious of the encroachment of religious values into public life.
"He isn't getting ready for the administration for all intents and purposes. Cengiz Aktar, a political science professor at the Istanbul Policy Center, stated, "He is preparing for a completely new presidency, a presidency like Putin."
It is extremely concerning that Turkey is currently hyperpolarized. The outcome worries half of the nation.
0 Comments