Turkey’s next election could shape more than next four years
Once Turks head to the polls in June 2015 for their next scheduled general election there will be no further local or general elections until 2019.
With the August presidential election and March local election already passed, the June 2015 general election will be Turkey's last until 2019. Coming when Turkey's political system is on the brink of profound change, that election could define much more than the next four years.
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has been proposing to change the parliamentary system into a presidential one. According to Article 175 of the constitution, the draft proposal to change the articles of the constitution can only be accepted by a three-fifths majority (330) of the total number of seats in the parliament by secret ballot. Then, the parliament speaker sends that approved draft to the president to be approved and published in the Official Gazette, making it the law of the land.
While the Justice and Development Party (AKP) has been victorious in all elections since coming to power a decade ago, the party lost some seats in the last election, lowering its current total to 312.
Ersan Sen, an Istanbul-based law professor, told Al-Monitor that even though the AKP may not win enough seats to make constitutional change by itself in the parliament, it can still build alliances with the pro-Kurdish People’s Democracy Party (HDP) to reach that crucial number. “However, it’s impossible to make any changes to the constitution or to take any draft proposal to referendum without the exact number of parliamentarians noted in the constitution,” Sen said.
