Turkey would have had a long period of political stability between 2011 and 2014 without electoral terms. This opportunity has been totally lost due to two main reasons. First, the international environment has severely deteriorated along Turkey's southeastern borders. From a privileged partner status, Syria swiftly and inexorably moved to the status of a failed rogue state, a thorn in the side of deep and extremely bloody civil strife.

Instead of exporting its stability and economic growth to Syria, Lebanon and Jordan, through a free trade zone that would have started as early as 2011, Turkey had the difficult moral duty to host an ever growing wave of desperate refugees from Syria. The number of refugees in Turkey amounts to up to two million today, paid for almost exclusively by Turkey's own resources. Not only has Syria become a deadly hub for international terror movements, but also the total and comprehensive turmoil that has taken in virtually all the Middle East has severed all economic, trading and social ties of Turkey with these countries. The coup in Egypt, the ever deteriorating situation in Iraq and the terrible fate of Gaza and the occupied Palestinian territories has not really left any margin for economic diplomacy in the region. The only country with whom Turkey could have expanded its existing economic and diplomatic ties was Israel. After the Gaza bombings and Mavi Marmara tragedy, relations with Israel went from bad to worse and still show no sign of improvement. Domestic developments have hardly been showing a positive trend either. In 2013, a widespread social unrest, characterized by the Gezi Park protests took place, deeply undermining the already strained dialogue channels between the government and the opposition, between the different components of civil society and between the state apparatus and the private sector.

In addition to all these developments, a huge political crisis that President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and the Justice and Development Party (AK Party) officials call a "tentative coup," occurred on Dec. 17 and Dec. 25, 2013, which ushered in an undeclared war between the AK Party and an obscure internationally organized and financially strong Islamic fraternity called the Gülen Movement, led by Fethullah Gülen, a self-styled and self-exiled cleric in Pennsylvania. The movement, unlike any Islamic fraternity in history, has a very wide and well-organized international financial and education system, a little bit like the Knights Templar in the 14th century. Their fate could become similar as well as seen by the zeal and fervor with which Erdoğan and the government try to wipe their shadowy influence away from daily politics and the state apparatus.

This latter development has incited Erdoğan to wage an incredibly popular campaign, first for the municipal elections, then the presidential election and now for the parliamentary elections. Since January 2014, Erdoğan toured every part of Turkey and parts of Western Europe where there are large numbers Turkish expatriates, almost without a break. He has won two elections, and it is more than predictable that the general elections in June will give the AK Party yet another majority in Parliament.

Still, there will be no real lull in politics as there is a hybrid situation today where a directly elected president shares the governance with the prime minister and the government. The country will need a new and totally revised constitution and Erdoğan is adamantly asking for one, which would implement a semi-presidential regime, based perhaps on the current French Fifth Republic model. In the aftermath of the coming elections, we will enter a new period of political debates to try to forge out a consensus for a new constitution. Seen from the angle of the polarization of society today, the results of the elections might not herald the beginning of a new era of political calm and quietude, which is a real pity, because what Turkish politics needs now is some respite.