This helps them prepare for the challenge during the long period that lies ahead and gives a chance to the electorate to make up their minds, weighing up the pros and cons of the contenders. However the opposite is true for Turkey. There are two months to the presidential elections and there is no candidate! Isn't it odd?Well perhaps not, for the candidate is already designated. This semblance of certainty emanates from the nature of the Turkish political system. The president of the republic is elected by the Parliament, not by a plebiscite. Hence the dominant or majority party always has the upper hand.
The late Turgut Özal and the last president, Süleyman Demirel, were prime ministers and heads of the leading party in the National Assembly, or Parliament, before they were made president. So why shouldn't what worked for them not work for current premier Recep Tayyip Erdoğan? After all, it is his legal right to be elected.
If he exercises this constitutional right, the 11th president of Turkey will either be him or somebody hand-picked by him. So can we say that there is no candidate? The candidate is there alright, only his name has not been announced. Why is that so?
Erdoğan is a controversial man. His is a political career deeply rooted in the surge of a new class of politicians with a religious background. Religion was at the core of conservative, parochial values of an upwardly mobile social cohort with roots in the countryside or small towns of the country. This social cohort used religion as a rallying point to identify their position in a society that was rapidly changing from the traditional to the modern. So religious rhetoric was a medium that bridged the past with the present and functioned like a parachute for a safe landing in a new lifestyle, while not psychologically bereft of the traditional.
Otherwise how could Erdoğan's Justice and Development Party (AK Party) adopt the European Union vocation that its members rejected before coming to power, just as most of the parties on the political spectrum who claim to be more modern and secular in orientation remained ambivalent or in opposition? Yet these pseudo-modern and secular organizations and power groups always remained skeptical of the AK Party's motives, initiatives and final target, which they see as establishing a religious state.
The presidency symbolized by current President Ahmet Necdet Sezer is among the secularist central, or statist, forces that are inclined to downsize the power of the elected government and its leader. Thus so far the statist elite felt empowered and safe by checking the power of the government and AK Party-dominated legislature.
Now there is the likelihood that -- and no legal obstacle to -- the presidency going to the AK Party. The opposing power centers dread seeing a member of this party, particularly its leader who they have demonized for so long, in the Çankaya presidential palace. That is why they are calling on Erdoğan and his party for reconciliation between the contending powers in the system, not candidates. Should the premier and AK Party heed this call, which is often accompanied with warnings of impending "chaos"?
Why should they? The head of the government is no less an important and powerful person than the president. Secondly the "chaos" touted as a bogeyman is or will be a fabrication of the very forces that mention it. So it is doubtful that calls for reconciliation will be taken seriously by Erdoğan and his party. Furthermore, the Constitution holds that after the first two runs that require 367 votes to win, the third and fourth runs require only 276 votes to determine the next president (Article 102). Hence even the Constitution favors the majority leader or candidate. Well the AK Party has the necessary majority in Parliament.
The election process will start on April 16, 30 days prior to the termination of the seven-year term of the incumbent president. It seems we will have our 11th president in May. Who do you think he will be?
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