President or Prime Minister Erdoğan?

Now that the local elections are over with a resounding victory for Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Turks are seeking the answer to a new golden question: Will he become president or will he opt to remain as prime minister?

Faced with a clear smear campaign, despite all odds ranging from graft allegations to charges of authoritarian rule, the nation gave the prime minister the benefit of the doubt and clearly asked him to remain at the helm of the country for the next four to five years.

Despite local elections aimed only at electing mayors and municipal assemblies, the prime minister turned the March 30 elections into a referendum on his administration, and the opposition accepted the challenge.

Normally, the message of the nation would be read: Remain as prime minister for the next four to five years, but the situation in Turkey is as usual a little more complicated.

Erdoğan has presidential aspirations, but many analysts including some people close to him felt that due to the potentially damaging environmental protests last year at Istanbul's Gezi Park that mushroomed into a countrywide challenge to his administration, the revelation of a flood of potentially damaging confidential recordings suggesting serious corruption charges and irregularities concerning his ministers and recordings of his alleged conversations with his children, the chance of the prime minister becoming president in the upcoming August elections was seriously hurt. But nearly half of the voters of Turkey displayed their confidence in the prime minister and simply turned a blind eye to all allegations, slander, insults and the smear campaign and showed that their votes are there to carry Erdoğan to the presidency.

What is interesting is that according to a survey on voter behavior, 77 percent of those who voted for Erdoğan reportedly felt the graft charges against his ministers may be valid but still supported him because they trust him and believe he has successfully led the country and is building a "new Turkey." There is also speculation that the opposition now realizes that they cannot get rid of the Justice and Development Party (AK Party) as long as Erdoğan is prime minister and may actually give him some form of support to become president and thus create new conditions where they can deal with the party in power. Main opposition Republican People's Party leader Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu on his part, however, has said he opposes Erdoğan's candidacy and claimed the people would not vote for him.

So the presidency option is back on the table for Erdoğan, but he also has to listen to the other message of his voters that they want him to carry on effectively leading the country. The president has much authority in Turkey, but in our system the prime minister is actually the man who runs the country and controls all the financial resources. So Erdoğan would want to be president but also effectively run the country, thus satisfying his massive supporters.

Whether Erdoğan can run the country from the presidential palace and also control his party effectively remains to be seen. It needs rule changes that enable the president to be a political party member. But this time, the president also has added power: This will be the first time the people elect the president. Until now, Parliament elected the president, but now with the national vote behind him, the president will be popularly elected and thus will have added moral and political strength.

If Erdoğan had not received such a mandate in last Sunday's polls, he could have opted to remain as prime minister by changing his own rule of serving only three terms in succession in an official post, which is valid for all his AK Party officials. For now, Erdoğan says the three-term rule will prevail. If Erdoğan opts to become a candidate for the presidency, he has to make sure he leaves behind a strong parliamentary group and a cabinet completely loyal to him. Actually, this is also valid even if he wants to stay on as prime minister. But with all the political turmoil experienced in the last year, the resignations in the AK Party and the fact that about 70 AK Party deputies (some of the top ministers) who know they will not be re-elected for a fourth term because of the three-term rule imposed by the prime minister turns Parliament into a lame duck assembly that has to remain in office for another year.

With the popularity test successfully over, Erdoğan could have called for early parliamentary elections, but on Friday he told reporters before leaving for an official visit to Azerbaijan that early polls are not on the table and gave assurances to the business community that elections will be held on time in 2015. So he feels he can carry on with this parliamentary group despite possible drawbacks.

If Erdoğan decides to become a candidate for the presidency, he has to decide whom he will leave behind as prime minister. If Erdoğan remains as prime minister, it is clear that he would prefer that Abdullah Gül stay on as president. But if he decides to opt for the presidency, then it has to be someone from his own parliamentary group who will become prime minister, as this person has to be a member of Parliament according to the Constitution.

Gül told reporters last week during a state visit to Kuwait that the time has come for him and Erdoğan to come together and decide on the future course regarding presidential elections. He stressed that neither he nor Erdoğan would do anything without the knowledge of the other like Erdoğan declaring his candidacy for president without informing Gül. Erdoğan on Friday told reporters he shares Gül's views. So the ball is in Erdoğan's court. The time has come for him to make crucial decisions that will reshape Turkey's political map.