Jerry wrote:Tim Drayton wrote:Erdoğan is currently in Brussels for talks with various people from the EU. The expected outcome is that Turkey will be given a lot of money by the EU to pay for hosting Syrian refugees in Turkey and improve conditions at refugee camps, while at the same time EU border control forces will be allowed to operate on Turkish territory and turn back refugees who attempt to travel on to the EU. (I can't help wondering why they are meeting Erdoğan, who is no longer prime-minister of Turkey but occupies the post of president, which under the Turkish constitution is a purely ceremonial position. This is tantamount to recognising Erdoğan as de-facto dictator of Turkey, a position he himself aspires to, but this is hardly consistent with the supposed European value of respect for the rule of law.)
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As for him being recognised as de-facto dictator I'm afraid for the time being EU has little choice, he has Europe by the short and curlies. Let's hope the EU has a good memory. Whatever the result of next month's election I presume he will still be president, should be interesting if the opposition parties win.
I am not so sure if I agree with that. There are repeat parliamentary elections in Turkey in less than a month and unless the AKP can form a majority government afterwards, Erdoğan's position looks very shaky to me. All the polls are showing that the AKP will not get enough seats to form a majority government. There is no doubt that the AKP will do all it can to rig the poll. It has already been announced, citing security concerns, that polling stations will not be set up in quite a few villages in the south east and people will have to travel to other villages to vote - by some strange 'coincidence', these all happen to be villages with a past record of voting for opposition parties. There has been a wave of arrests in the past few days targeting some candidates for the opposition HDP party and key people within the party, obviously in the hope of affecting their ability to canvass, and it is crucial for the HDP to get over the 10% threshold to deny the AKP a parliamentary majority. I still think, unless they produce something else from their sleeves to rig the poll, that the AKP will not gain a parliamentary majority. If a coalition excluding the AKP is formed, the widespread expectation is for the December 2013 anti-corruption investigations to be relaunched, and it was clear from the material already leaked into the public domain at that the time that there is plenty of material to convict both Erdoğan and a great many others in the leading echelons of his party. There are already plausible rumours that Erdoğan is preparing to flee the country if the election does not go his way. I do not see him being in a strong position at all just now. I keep my fingers crossed that the nightmare for the Turkish people will soon come to an end. As such, I think Europe's approach is very misguided. In fact, if the West wants to get shot of Erdoğan (and I have no idea if it does or not), they have a unique opportunity to intervene behind the scenes and make sure a coalition excluding the AKP can be formed.
As you say, if the opposition forms a government and he is not prosecuted, he will still be president. But, his current strength derives not from being president, but from being the puppet master from behind the scenes of the AKP when the latter had a parliamentary majority. Otherwise he will have no power as president, given there appears to be no chance of a constitutional change that will introduce a presidential system and give him the Putin-style power he hankers after.
