Over the past weeks, President Abdullah Gül faced heavy criticism from the opposition over his unwillingness to publically challenge Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and his government. Much to the opposition's disdain, the president instead chose to reach out to the administration and various opposition parties in private to build a consensus over controversial provisions.
Looking past initial reactions, it would become clear that the president's role in the Turkish government will change drastically in light of new electoral laws as the Constitutional Court will have to fill the institutional vacuum.
For a long time, Erdoğan's opponents in Turkey and elsewhere identified Gül as a formidable counterforce against the prime minister. During the Gezi Park protests last summer, a considerable number of citizens appealed to Gül via Twitter and demanded that he took matters into his own hands. In December 2012, main opposition leader Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu famously announced on live television that his Republican People's Party (CHP) would back Gül if he sought re-election for a five-year term.
The European Commission's 2013 progress report echoed the domestic opposition's sentiments as it pitted the president against the prime minister. The report praised the former for playing a "conciliatory role" while accusing the latter of adopting "an uncompromising stance [and] a polarizing tone toward citizens, civil society organizations and businesses." Over time, this interpretation of the inner dynamics of Turkey's political leadership helped observers build unrealistic expectations about the president's role in Turkish government.
The situation at hand, therefore, requires a more detailed perspective that looks beyond President Gül's credentials as a likeable political figure and tackles the question of the president's future role after the countrys first-ever direct elections this summer. The guiding ethos of Turkey's old establishment was to protect the state from perceived threats.
While the military was primarily responsible for keeping a lid on the expression of dissent through politics, it formed a close partnership with key government institutions including the courts and the presidency. Former President Ahmet Necdet Sezer, an overzealous secularist, fit the bill perfectly. He was tasked with stopping the greatest threat to the country, a political party that had just won landslide victory in popular elections. President Sezer single-handedly forged a series of deadlocks between 2002 and 2007 by using his veto power to such an extent that the veto came to epitomize his entire legacy.
President Gül, in contrast, has been particularly reluctant to resort to the presidential veto. With Turkey's first direct presidential election only a few months away, the presidency once again faces a period of transformation within a new institutional setting. In 2007, a constitutional referendum altered Turkey's electoral laws to allow voters to directly elect the president. Briefly put, the new rules of the game will inevitably transform the president from an unelected yet powerful official to an inherently political figure with new priorities including approval rates and re-election.
Under the new rules, the president will likely exercise existing, but almost never used, powers, especially if a coalition government occupies the office of the prime minister. As such, observers must develop a new set of expectations from the office of the president and instead accept the judiciary, as mentioned in President Gül's press statement following his approval of the controversial judicial reform bill, as the final authority on constitutionality.
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