Two bad news for Erdoğan in one day

Opposition CHP leader’s warning for the possibility of an early election, and rulings of the Constitional Court about the necessity of laws instead of decrees on appo,ntments were bad news for Erdoğan.(Photo: Turkish Presidency)

As President Tayyip Erdoğan began his day on June 4, there was a problem on his agenda that could potentially evolve into a crisis. The day before, on June 3, Interior Ministry had first detained and then dismissed Mehmet Sıddık Akış, the DEM Party mayor of Hakkari, who had won the election on March 31, and appointed Governor Ali Çelik as a trustee. By the end of the day, two pieces of bad news had been added to this problem.
Moreover, the trustee problem was growing. The reaction was not limited to the DEM Party, which continued its protests in the General Assembly of the Parliament by traveling to Hakkari. This time in 2016, the CHP had not fallen into the AK Party’s trap of lifting parliamentary immunity. Özgür Özel had characterized Akış’s dismissal on the basis of a pending lawsuit filed 10 years ago as a usurpation of the will of the people and sent a delegation headed by CHP spokesperson Deniz Yücel to Hakkari.
MHP leader Devlet Bahçeli was pleased; he congratulated the Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya in his Parliamentary Group speech because of his trustee move. However, AK Party Diyarbakır MP Suna Kepolu Ataman, for example, said, “We are all uncomfortable with the trustees [issue].”

Early election talk is bad news

The first bad news for Erdoğan during the day came from the CHP Group, which convened at noon. In response to Erdoğan’s remarks at the AK Party’s political camp over the weekend that “We cannot give up our red lines for political softening”, Özel made an exit that was not widely expected in Ankara.
Özel brought up early elections for the first time: “I would not use March 31 as an excuse and say ‘Let’s go to the polls now. But if things continue as they are now, the nation will demand early elections and no one can stand in front of it.”
He elaborated his reasoning as follows:
– “If someone draws a line saying ‘I have red lines’ and hides behind that line and considers it a red line to disobey the constitution, not to recognize the Constitutional Court, to seize the will of the people with trustee policies, to usurp assembly and demonstration marches, and to further oppress ignored segments of society, neither détente nor normalization can be talked about there.”

Possible impact on the economy

Özel’s statement before Erdoğan’s visit to the CHP, which he promised for the week of June 9-15, has another meaning besides throwing the ball into Erdoğan’s court.
Both Erdoğan and Treasury and Finance Minister Mehmet Şimşek have been telling both domestic and foreign investors what they wanted to hear since March 31, and promising that there would be no elections until 2028. Now, unexpectedly, the main opposition party, which emerged as the first party in the local elections, adds thee “early elections” rhetoric to Turkey’s agenda.
One of the two Constitutional Court decisions announced in the afternoon may cause question marks in the field of economy.
The ruling, which will not affect the economy, but rather education, administration and bureaucracy, is that the President’s power to appoint university rectors only up to Presidential decrees (KHK) without a legislation violates the Constitution.
The Constitutional Court’s decision on the economy is the ruling that the President cannot dismiss Central Bank Governors without the authorization of the Parliament.

Bahçeli or Özel dilemma

Those are also bad news for Erdoğan.
First, for years, against all the warnings of the opposition parties, Erdoğan has appointed many people close to him as rectors of universities, whether they were qualified or not. The biggest objection to this came from Boğaziçi University; protests against the appointments are still ongoing.
Secondly, after Erdoğan dismissed Murat Çetinkaya in 2019 for not obeying his instruction to “lower interest rates”, he dismissed four more Central Bank Governors.
In both cases, the Constitutional Court says that legislation is needed instead of a decree law, and that this should be done within 12 months. It should be noted that both decisions were taken on the application of the CHP.
Another dimension of the matter is that the Constitutional Court, which was argued that it would no longer take decisions that would disturb the AK Party government with the retirement of Zühtü Arslan, has, at least in this case, disproved those claims.
In order to dampen the energy – accumulating in a bad way – in Ankara’s political and bureaucratic fault lines, Erdoğan’s option seems to be to continue the “normalization process” with Özel.
For the sake of the economy, and democratic politics Erdoğan should not put himself before the dilemma of Bahçeli or Özel.