Reuters, Ankara :
Whether it teams up with the nationalist or secularist opposition, Turkey’s ruling AK Party must navigate the same obstacle in its search for a junior coalition partner: the ambition of President Tayyip Erdogan.
Though his efforts to forge a powerful executive presidency have for now been thwarted, Erdogan has held on to the reins of government despite stepping down as prime minister last August to take on the largely figurehead role of president.
Opposition leaders who could now enter government in a coalition have made clear they will not tolerate his meddling, suggesting the days of him hosting cabinet meetings in his 1,000-room new palace could be over, at least in the near term.
“A coalition seems inevitable, and the AK Party will be in it. That is evident,” a senior party official told Reuters, on his way to what he said could be weeks of strategy meetings with Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu and the AKP top brass.
Erdogan’s past utterances on political opponents scarcely smooth the way to compromise. Last year, at the height of graft scandal he said had been engineered to topple him, he dubbed his rivals terrorists and traitors locked in an “alliance of evil”.
Sunday’s election, in which the Islamist-rooted AKP lost its parliament majority, ended more than a decade of single-party rule, dealt a blow to Erdogan’s ambitions for a US-style presidency and plunged Turkey into uncertainty not seen since the 1990s.
Though it could try to rule alone in a minority government, senior party sources said the AKP was determined to at least try to form a coalition, with the right-wing Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) seen as its most likely partner.
Whether it teams up with the nationalist or secularist opposition, Turkey’s ruling AK Party must navigate the same obstacle in its search for a junior coalition partner: the ambition of President Tayyip Erdogan.
Though his efforts to forge a powerful executive presidency have for now been thwarted, Erdogan has held on to the reins of government despite stepping down as prime minister last August to take on the largely figurehead role of president.
Opposition leaders who could now enter government in a coalition have made clear they will not tolerate his meddling, suggesting the days of him hosting cabinet meetings in his 1,000-room new palace could be over, at least in the near term.
“A coalition seems inevitable, and the AK Party will be in it. That is evident,” a senior party official told Reuters, on his way to what he said could be weeks of strategy meetings with Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu and the AKP top brass.
Erdogan’s past utterances on political opponents scarcely smooth the way to compromise. Last year, at the height of graft scandal he said had been engineered to topple him, he dubbed his rivals terrorists and traitors locked in an “alliance of evil”.
Sunday’s election, in which the Islamist-rooted AKP lost its parliament majority, ended more than a decade of single-party rule, dealt a blow to Erdogan’s ambitions for a US-style presidency and plunged Turkey into uncertainty not seen since the 1990s.
Though it could try to rule alone in a minority government, senior party sources said the AKP was determined to at least try to form a coalition, with the right-wing Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) seen as its most likely partner.
