![]() Kaiser Permanente announced it has launched Food for Life, a landmark initiative to increase food security on a national scale. “In recent years, Erdogan has turned Turkey’s regulatory institutions into censorship and sanctions bodies,” Soner Cagaptay, director of the Turkish Research Program at The Washington Institute, wrote in a report this week.OAKLAND, Calif. The courts, media, universities and financial regulators have all come under tighter control during his tenure, with the AKP appointing many of their most senior administrative figures. Officials in Erdogan’s office rejected any suggestion of a deliberate delay, with one describing such claims as “baseless”.īut it is not just a hold over the armed forces, long suspicious of Erdogan’s Islamist roots, that he is keen to maintain. Reining in a military which forced four governments from power in the second half of the 20th Century was one of Erdogan’s priorities during his 12 years as prime minister. This meeting comes as Ankara weighs military intervention on the Syrian border, well aware of the Turkish army’s past reluctance to act beyond national frontiers. Some opposition MPs have suggested Erdogan is stalling to sow opposition disarray and ensure the AKP is still firmly in power for a military council in August, where top commanders are appointed. His second aim is to continue until snap elections with an AKP government,” said Ozer Sencar, chairman of pollster Metropoll. He needs to change the AKP administration first. “Erdogan needs time to get where he wants to. That has yet to happen, with Erdogan repeating late on Tuesday that he will give the mandate only once a new parliamentary administrative board is formed, prompting opposition MPs to accuse him of stalling. “Erdogan is promoting the image that they are fighting against each other.”Īn IPSOS poll shortly after the June 7 results suggested the AKP would have had 4 percent more support if voters had known the outcome in advance, although subsequent polls have contradicted this, suggesting its support could fall.Įrdogan had been expected to give Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu the mandate to form a new coalition government this week, setting the clock ticking on a 45-day period to succeed or face a new election. “The opposition is being worn down,” said Hakan Bayrakci, chairman of polling firm SONAR. Others may bicker and snipe, but the man who had estranged many by his raucous, combative manner in recent years, now holds his peace and appears untainted by the fray. That prospect is one that would disturb NATO partners eager for stability in a country bordering Iran, Iraq and Syria, with Islamic State militants ensconced hundreds of meters from borders constantly criss-crossed by refugees.Įrdogan is turning “banishment” to the shadows - under the constitution, the president is excluded from party politics - to his advantage. Their hope is that a re-run would restore a simple AK majority, as voters who turned their back on the AKP in June balk at any suggestion of a return to the coalition bickering that pitched Turkey into economic crisis in the 1990s. There is need for an urgent snap election, through which our people will show their will,” said one AK Party elder familiar with Erdogan’s thinking. “A coalition will be hard to form and impossible to maintain. Despite his repeated calls for a new government to be formed quickly, his interests - and those of the AKP he founded - appear to lie in the failure of coalition talks and a new election. The man who has dominated Turkey’s political landscape for more than a decade is ill-disposed to sharing power. The June 7 vote plunged Turkey into political uncertainty not seen since the unstable coalition governments of the 1990s and thwarted, for now, Erdogan’s ambition to turn the largely figurehead presidency he assumed last year into the powerful executive position he had all but taken for granted. Opposition parties are as fragmented as ever, and Erdogan - from the shadows - is calculating how best to maintain his grip. Turkey's President Tayyip Erdogan greets parliamentarians as he arrives at the Turkish parliament to watch a swearing-in ceremony in Ankara, Turkey, JREUTERS/Umit BektasĪ month after an election which saw the AKP lose its ability to govern alone for the first time, talks to form a coalition have yet to begin. ![]()
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