The first day of 2013 is offering clues as to what will keep Turkey busy this year. The priority appears to be the work on a new constitution. Most likely Turkey won’t be able to introduce a new constitution and the ruling Justice and Development Party [AKP] will try to impose a constitutional draft that provides for an empowered president, fulfilling Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s aspirations for the 2014 elections. Other parties will resist and Turkey will thus move into 2013 with symptoms of a political crisis.
The first clue to how 2013 will start came from a statement on the last day of 2012, when the Parliamentary Speaker Cemil Cicek announced that he will be meeting with the main opposition leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu on Jan. 2.
