An early election is not on the table for Türkiye right now, Parliament Speaker Numan Kurtulmuş said Sunday, dismissing calls from the main opposition for general polls next year.
“There is no point to raising a political debate over a topic that doesn’t exist,” Kurtulmuş told reporters on a flight back from a G-20 meeting in Brazil.
“Parliament has been elected and will serve its term until 2028, as will President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan,” Kurtulmuş added.
Türkiye went to polls in May last year where Erdoğan won against his main rival in two rounds of a presidential vote and his ruling Justice and Development Party (AK Party) won a parliamentary majority with its national allies.
The main opposition’s Republican People's Party (CHP) bounced back in the March 31 local elections, retaining key metropolitan cities like Istanbul and Ankara, but CHP leader Özgür Özel has been set on an early election for November 2025.
There is currently no set agreement among other opposition parties at Parliament and the ruling alliance, including AK Party and the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), remains against the idea.
Erdoğan, who has been elected president twice since Türkiye made the switch to executive presidency, will serve out his five year term until 2028 if he does not call for a snap election.
If he does, the Constitution allows Erdoğan to run for a third time.
Özel previously argued a snap vote, encouraged by local wins, would hurt the confidence of the CHP voters. He implied he would not make the call unless the government addressed economic woes.
Erdoğan’s administration has been implementing fresh policies to tackle the cost-of-living crisis, with annual inflation consistently declining to a 15-month low of 48% in October.
Recent polls show the AK Party has been quickly narrowing the gap while Erdoğan easily outpaces his main rivals from the CHP.
If an early election was called next year per Özel’s demands, the ballot would likely include Erdoğan but not the main opposition leader.
Özel has recently confirmed he would not run for president in 2028, citing a possibility he would “lose his objectivity, surrender to his personal ambitions and block other candidates’ paths.”
The CHP has two presidential contenders, one in its Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoğlu, and another in its Ankara Mayor Mansur Yavaş.
Imamoğlu, who helped Özel wrestle the party from his predecessor Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu after the latter lost another election to Erdoğan last year, has been rumored to challenge Erdoğan in the general vote.
Imamoğlu, who won Istanbul in 2019 and again in the local elections this year, has ambiguously remarked he would “be where the nation wants me to be” when asked about running for president.
Meanwhile, rumors swirl that Yavaş is being isolated within the party to slim his chances of being picked as the CHP’s presidential runner in 2028, deepening an apparent divide in Türkiye’s oldest party between Özel’s supporters and pro-Kılıçdaroğlu dissidents.
Following a meeting on Monday, CHP's provincial branch heads, largely on Özel's side, said in a joint statement the delegates call for "not an extraordinary congress but an early election."
