Erdogan aims to create stronger presidential system
The ruling Justice and Development Party needs sufficient votes in June to draft a constitution that fulfills President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s dream of becoming Turkey’s sole leader.
Putting aside all pretenses of the political impartiality required of him under the constitution, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has started to campaign on behalf of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), which he wants to see emerge stronger from the general elections on June 7.
Erdogan is not toiling for the future of the AKP, though, but for his own political future as an executive president, which he hopes to bring about by means of a new constitution to be drafted on his behalf by the AKP. Polls already indicate the AKP will win the elections with a comfortable lead, but this is not enough for Erdogan.
He needs the party, which he co-founded and headed until he was elected president in August 2014, to win at least a two-thirds majority in parliament so that it can draft a new constitution and submit it to a referendum without support from other parties.
He made this amply clear in an address to a crowd of supporters in the central Anatolian city of Kirsehir on Jan. 30.
