President Erdogan on Wednesday announced that Turkey will have snap elections on June 24, 2018, after a meeting with opposition Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) chairman Devlet Bahçeli at the presidential complex.
Simon Tisdall has caried his uncomfortableness to his column in The Guardian. Tisdall has stated that Erdogan will guarantee his place in the “elected dictators’ club”. He mentioned that ‘Erdogan is one of a crop of present-day political leaders who value the respectability an ostensibly democratic election confers but don’t want to risk actually losing the vote.’
“Turkey’s president is no different from Russia’s Vladimir Putin and Egypt’s Abdel Fatah al-Sisi. Their shared idea of democracy can be summed up by the motto: ‘You vote, I win.’ “ he wrote.
Tisdall indicates that Erdogan and his ruling Justice and Development party’s losing the snap presidential and parliamentary polls is extremely unlikely: “The AKP won a clear majority of seats in parliament in 2015 and is already assured of the support, should it need it, of the Nationalist Movement party (MHP).”
“By bringing the polls forward, Erdoğan is finally set to gain full, personal control of all key aspects of domestic and foreign policy. He will become a dictator in all but name, more powerful perhaps than even Kemal Atatürk, modern, secular Turkey’s founding father.” the columnist also added.