New system will create political crisis: Main opposition leader

ANKARA

A new system brought in by constitutional amendments is prone to produce a political crisis, main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) leader Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu has said, amid criticisms he received over earlier comments. 

“Let’s assume a party gained the majority in parliament. If the leader of the party cannot gain the 51 percent, he or she will not be able to become president. Somebody else from a party that does not have the majority in parliament will become president. The president’s party will be different than the party that has the majority in parliament. The real tension will start then,” Kılıçdaroğlu told a group of CHP mayors on March 9. 

His comments came after Prime Minister Binali Yıldırım mocked Kılıçdaroğlu for saying the new system would create crisis because “the president and the prime minister can be from different parties.”

“We have to thank Kılıçdaroğlu because he said there would be a problem if the political parties of the prime minister and the president were different. He explained to Turkey what we have been trying to say. The new system will abolish the conflict. But there is a detail; he doesn’t know that the system will be changed,” Yıldırım said on March 8, stressing that the new system would abolish the prime ministry. 

CHP deputy leader Bülent Tezcan said Kılıçdaroğlu’s choice of words had implied the leader of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) and had made a mistake in his speech. 

“The usage of prime ministry was a slip of the tongue because saying prime minister has been settled in our language for 95 years,” Tezcan told Hürriyet Daily News on March 9. 

“Yıldırım also said something that is not included in the charter. He said the presidential elections can be held with 100,000 votes, which is not true. We are not settling on that, because we have many things to say about the charter to be able to say ‘no,’” he said. 

“Thanks to Mr. Binali for saying ‘Kılıçdaroğlu said the truths to the public.’ He does not need to bother and say anything. If he listens to me he’d learn how loyal I am to my words,” Kılıçdaroğlu said in response to Yıldırım. 

“They say that with the constitutional amendment, the problem with having two sides in the system will be resolved. It is not right. It will become a constitutional institution. The elected president will both represent Turkey and lead his political party,” he said.  

“Not just at the top [of the state], the grassroots will also have dual heads. Both the provincial heads of the party and the governor will represent the president,” he added.  

He also slammed Yıldırım for likening the new system to the mayoral system, saying that mayors are under the supervision of many institutions, while a supervision mechanism for the president is absent in the constitutional amendment. 

“They say it is the same. They think mayors are not supervised because their own mayors are not supervised,” he said. 

Kılıçdaroğlu also added that the charter seeks a system which will grant the president the authority to annul the parliament, appoint judges, prosecutors, senior government officials, and the deputy president, of which the number is uncertain, however, such authorities were never granted to any mayor. 

“How can they say that it is the same as mayors? I just cannot comprehend it,” he said.