The head of Turkey’s pro-Kurdish opposition yesterday accused President Tayyip Erdogan of trying to create a “constitutional dictatorship” by pushing for an executive presidential system, and of fostering a climate of fear to win an election landslide.
Selahattin Demirtas, who co-leads the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), told Reuters he believed the government could call a referendum as soon as this time next year on a new constitution that would transform what has been a largely ceremonial presidency.
A senior member of the AK Party, which Mr Erdogan founded, denied the charges of fear mongering, saying that on the contrary it had suffered while trying to campaign in the predominantly Kurdish southeast of Turkey.
In the second election to be held this year, the AKP last week regained the parliamentary majority which it lost in June, winning 317 of 550 seats – only 13 short of the number needed to call sucha referendum.
Mr Demirtas stressed the HDP would oppose the plan of putting more power in the hands of the presidency, which Mr Erdogan has held since stepping up from the prime ministership last year.
“We would have to lose our minds to agree to this,” he said in an interview conducted on Sunday. “Erdogan’s plan for the executive presidential system is not a model for an executive presidency but one-man rule, a constitutional dictatorship that merges all authority into a single hand.”
Mr Erdogan’s spokesman said after the election on November 1 that an issue such as changing the presidential system couldn’t be decided without the nation’s support and, if a referendum were needed, then one would be held.
Speaking at the HDP headquarters, Mr Demirtas said next summer might be too early for a referendum but it could happen as soon as autumn 2016.
The HDP stunned pundits and pollsters in June when it won more than 13 per cent of the vote, reaching beyond its Kurdish base to secular leftists and others put off by years of rule by Erdogan and the AKP. But in the re-run, held after coalition negotiations failed, it barely scraped over the 10 per cent threshold required to enter parliament, taking 59 seats, or 21 fewer than in June.
The rise in AKP support appeared to have been motivated by renewed fighting in the southeast between the security forces and Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) militants after a ceasefire collapsed in July.
Conservative Kurds and liberal Turks who blame the PKK for the unrest turned their backs on the HDP. Mr Demirtas blamed an atmosphere created by the “presidential palace” for the fall in support for his party.