Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan cited 14 May as the date for Turkey’s presidential and parliamentary elections during his regular weekly speech in parliament on Wednesday.
The date would mark the anniversary of Turkey’s 1950 elections, when Adnan Menderes won “by saying ‘Enough, the nation will speak’,” daily Evrensel cited Erdoğan as saying.
“On the same day 73 years later, our nation will once again say ‘enough’ to putschists who pose as the table of six,” Erdoğan said, slamming the six-party alliance led by main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP).
In early January, the leaders of the Table of Six announced the parties would not support elections to be held after 6 April. “We will not support any elections held under the new system ushered in last year as an effort of political engineering,” the leaders said in the joint statement.
Erdoğan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) passed amendments to the election laws in March 2022, lowering the unusually high election threshold to 7 percent while changing how alliance votes are counted towards seats in parliament.
If the opposition does object to the election date, Erdoğan may disband parliament in March based on the authorities his office was bestowed with the 2018 referendum.
“We have fought against the effects of crises on our country, and are currently dealing with the freak alliance established against us,” Erdoğan told his party members in the weekly group meeting.
The president is preparing to run for a third term in the upcoming elections, in violation of the law. However, legal experts in his party argue that due to Turkey abandoning its parliamentary system in favour of the current executive presidential system in the 2018 referendum, Erdoğan would be running for a new office for the first time.
“As a constitutional reminder, 14 May is within the regular elections calendar, as such, Erdoğan cannot make a decision by himself to run for president a third time,” Sera Kadıgil, former CHP MP and current spokeswoman for Workers’ Party of Turkey (TİP) said in a tweet. “The system has changed is not an opinion but a political cop out.”
The law allows for an incumbent president to run for a third time only in the condition that the parliament votes to “renew” elections during the president’s second term.
The Table of Six has not announced its joint candidate for president, saying the announcement would follow the announcement of the election date. Among major contenders is CHP leader Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, who would be an “appropriate” candidate, according to veteran Kurdish politician Ahmet Türk.
“I cannot speak on the decision the Table will make, but our voters would prefer Kılıçdaroğlu. He is an experienced politician, and has promised many things to the people. If there is another candidate, his promises will lose their ground,” Türk said.
“Kılıçdaroğlu is an appropriate candidate, and the most experienced among the possible ones. But we also have demands. The Table must announce its projects to further democracy, rights and freedoms,” the former Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) MP and current member of the party’s advisory council said.
The president “cannot achieve a result” if he makes a move to win the Kurdish vote, Türk said. Currently, Turkey’s 15 to 20 million Kurds have their vote divided fairly evenly between the HDP and AKP.
“Our voters are politically minded and have high awareness. They know very well how a monist understanding treats Kurds. There is no doubt. They would not choose Erdoğan when the elections come,” Türk said.
The HDP was expected to lend its support to the opposition candidate, as it did in the local elections in 2019 when major Turkish cities including capital Ankara and megacity Istanbul went from decades of conservative mayors to CHP’s relatively young secular candidates. However, due to a lack of perceived steps taken by the Table of Six, the party announced that it could put up its own candidate for the first round of elections.
