Stability in new system will transform political culture, experts say


Following the June 24 parliamentary and presidential elections, stability will usher in a new era in Turkish politics, thanks to the new executive presidential system.

Speaking on Tuesday at a panel organized by the Foundation for Political, Economic and Social Research (SETA), Nebi Miş, a political analyst for SETA, agreed that the upcoming period will bring about a new era for Turkish politics.

"After these elections, the [Justice and Development Party] AK Party will have been in power for 21 years by the next elections. This is both in terms of both Turkey's political history and world politics quite important," Miş said.

He stressed that this political stability will herald a new political culture transformation in Turkey. "There may be a change regarding the electoral threshold in the new system. The development of a two-block politics in Turkey can be an important step forward in terms of political stability in Turkey," he said, adding that the country may see new developments in politics.

Another political expert, Zahid Sobacı, an academic at Uludağ University, said that the new system model is based on three columns, "offices, councils and ministries." "We see that new developments in the field of public administration were taken into consideration when the executive model was put in place, and concepts such as efficiency, simplicity, coordination, solution-producing state that the president has put forward while introducing the new system are indicators of this," he said. Academic Vedat Bilgin, on the other hand, said that the significance of these elections were whether it would provide a new system.

"The most important thing about these elections was if they could provide a new system after the parliamentary system," Bilgin said.

He argued that the 1961 constitution paved the way for the West to be able to interfere in Turkish politics. He added that former presidents were not even able to appoint director generals.

He suggested that this is expected to change in the executive presidential system.

Turkey has now shifted into a new executive presidential system after some constitutional changes were approved in a popular vote on April 16, 2017. Though the new system was scheduled to kick in after the elections in November 2019, the early elections led to the swift shift to the new system. In the June 24 elections, the AK Party formed the People's Alliance with the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP). As a result of the elections, AK Party had 42.5 percent of the votes, losing the majority in Parliament. The MHP received 11.1 percent of the vote, pushing the People's Alliance to 53.6 percent. While the People's Alliance received 344 parliame

ntary seats, of which 295 are AK Party deputies, the Nation Alliance, which was formed by the Republican People's Party (CHP), the Good Party (İP) and the Felicity Party (SP), received 189 seats in Parliament.