SHAFAQNA – Recep Tayyip Erdogan has been in power for more than 15 years, either as prime minister or president of Turkey. One more time Erdogan is the frontrunner, but polls suggest it’ll be close.
Turkish citizens will be voting on June 24 in election to select the new members of parliament, and, more significantly, to elect a president with increased powers.
Amendments made to the constitution last year will give the new president substantial executive powers compared to the mostly symbolic role the office in the current parliamentary system, Aljazeera reported.
In contrast, the powers of the cabinet and parliament, which are currently the main executive and legislative branches in Turkish political system, will be reduced.
The parliament moved the election, originally scheduled for November 3, 2019, forward by more than a year in April.
Erdogan is now the frontrunner, but polls suggest it’ll be close. And with some 74 percent of Turks live in urban areas, up from 65 percent in 2001 (the year before Erdogan’s AK Party came to power), signs that big-city voters are moving against him represent urgent warnings for the man who’s led Turkey for longer than anyone else, Bloomberg reported.
It’s a stark and surprising turn. Before he was national leader Erdogan was in charge of the country’s biggest metropolis, Istanbul. Since his election as prime minister in 2003, he has governed as a kind of national mayor, ordering a park to be redeveloped here, a new road built there. And it’s the big cities that have driven Turkey’s economic boom, acquiring the trophies of his rule, from new airports to glittering office towers.
Read more from Shafaqna:
Erdogan: Turkey made historical decision by voting ‘Yes’
Erdogan arrives for election rally in Bosnia
Erdogan: We will nip US-backed ‘terror army’ at Syria/Turkey border