AK Party election campaign process to kick off in March


The Justice and Development Party's (AK Party) road map for the June 7 general elections has become clear, as the first step to garner votes will be taken with a March 10 meeting in which Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu is expected to instruct AK Party organizations to begin their studies.With the aim of having enough seats in Parliament to establish a new constitution without opposition and to switch the current parliamentary government to a presidential system, the AK Party's election manifest is scheduled to be announced on April 15 in an event attended by thousands of political figures, prominent business circles and celebrities. The main focus of the election manifest is expected to be a new constitution" and presidential system.Preseident Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has said that a presidential system will expedite the decision-making processes between state mechanisms. Reportedly, the AK Party is neither interested in a bicameral legislature nor the navette system used in France, since it is reminiscent of the 1960 constitution enacted after the 1960 coup. It was the first coup in modern Turkish history where the constitution introduced a senate to form a bicameral system. Now, the party is working on a unicameral system instead. The AK Party needs at least 330 deputies to conduct a referendum with the aim of building a new constitution. It would also need 367 deputies in Parliament to change the Constitution without a referendum. According to political circles in Ankara, the party aims to have 400 seats out of the 550 in Parliament, and many renowned figures from diverse backgrounds such as journalists, celebrities and businessmen as well as minorities may be on the party's deputy nomination list.For the following 12 days after the announcement of the election manifest, party representatives will be assigned to deliver the manifest to the public and the party organizations. Later, Davutoğlu will hold rallies starting April 27, which is the anniversary of an e-memorandum released by the General Staff in 2007 on its website regarding the then presidential election that turned into a political crisis in the country.According to the election road map, in a symbolic move to show the importance of the reconciliation process between Ankara and Kurds to end the decades-long conflict with the PKK, the party's election rallies are expected to begin in Turkey's southeastern city of Hakkari.The deputy candidacy list of the party is also expected to be submitted to the High Electoral Board (YSK) in the first week of April ahead of the election rallies. According to the party's election strategy, all candidate nominees will go through four phases to be announced as deputy candidates. Commissions led by the heads of AK Party cadres will at first evaluate candidate nominees and hold face-to-face meetings to ask why the candidates would like to enter politics as members of the AK Party and what kind of projects they have for the provinces in which they might be nominated. Following the first phase, the candidate nominees will hold talks with three different commissions and later by the commission chaired by Davutoğlu. Not only face-to-face meetings, but tendency surveys, feedback from sociologist, academics and citizens will also be taken into consideration in the nomination process.Erol Olçak, who ran the AK Party's previous election campaign, will also run the general elections campaign, as the campaigns are expected to touch on national unity, brotherhood and national will. Three ads will appear on national TV channels as part of the party's election campaign.