On Aug. 10, 2014, Turkey held a presidential election which was significantly different to the previous ones. This time, the president was directly elected by public rather than by Parliament.
Subsequently, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, the leader of the Justice and Development Party (AK Party), which has been in power for 12 years, was elected president, receiving 51.8 percent of the votes. Having completed five months in the presidential office, Erdoğan presided over the Cabinet meeting on Jan. 19, an act that sparked debates across the country.
Following the controversial Cabinet meeting, government spokesman Bülent Arınç said that it would not be a "routine" practice for Erdoğan to chair cabinet meetings, but nonetheless, various arguments continue to be voiced on the matter. Opposition parties argue that this preference of Erdoğan means questioning the country's parliamentary system, while the groups that conduct lobbying activities against Turkey abroad present this development as "a concrete indicator of Erdoğan's authoritarian tendencies."
Let us see whether these allegations reflect the truth and if so, then to what extent. First of all, Article 104 of the Constitution of the Republic of Turkey entitles the president "to preside over the Council of Ministers or to call the Council of Ministers to meet under his/her chairpersonship whenever he/she deems it necessary." Is this practice contrary to the conventions of a modern Republic, or is it really unprecedented? The answer to both these questions is no, as former presidents exercised this authority on many occasions. Turgut Özal and Kenan Evren convened the Council of Ministers seven and four times respectively, while Cemal Gürsel, Fahri Korutürk and Süleyman Demirel did so two times each.
Are these goings-on involving the first publicly-elected President Erdoğan a surprise for the electorate? No! During his election rallies, Erdoğan vowed that he would be "a sweating president," saying: "If I am elected, I will exercise [presidential] authorities to the full extent of the Constitution." So what is the primary concern here? Does this implementation not have legal precedence and legitimacy? How long has a president's authority to exercise a constitutional right been dependent on the fortune-telling skills and psychological state of opposition leaders in democratic nations?
The answer is evident. In Turkey, the tutelary regime, which held politics captive with three coups and numerous memoranda, has always regulated presidential authorities in favor of "reasonable and acceptable presidents." After all, unlike today, they were not bound by any restrictions such as elections. For them, the presidential office was not a rank which could reflect the will of religionists, Kurds, leftists and Alevis, in other words of the groups which play the role of "blacks" in Turkish society, who have been marginalized ever since the Republic was founded, despite constituting the majority of the population.
And it has always been like this. Commanders of the Turkish Land Forces used to ascend to the presidential palace after they were promoted to chief of the General Staff. If this was not the case, the "incompetent" Parliament used to appoint a technocrat as president from outside Parliament. For the first time, the practices of the established order failed. A man who had been engaged in civilian politics for 12 years rose up and became a candidate for that position, winning the popular vote with the utmost legitimacy.
This is a summary of the ongoing debates in Turkey. What we face today is not a discussion about a system. This is the natural consequence of a power balance between presidential and prime ministerial offices - a political practice which has legitimacy now, as it did in the past.
In fact, there is nothing problematic in terms of law, politics, practices and legitimacy. The required legal condition for Erdoğan to chair Cabinet meetings is simply that he exercises his will, just as the former presidents of Turkey, a country which has been administrated by a parliamentary system since 1923, decided to exercise this constitutional right using their own inclinations.
If opposition parties say they cannot tolerate this legitimate action, it is not the president who must amend the Constitution, but they themselves, despite how much they rather strictly hold on to it.
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