Turkey's president aims to create a country that is led by a single individual, Burhan Senatalar, a 69-year-old Social Democrat professor of public finance, told
Europolitics
in Ankara. He partly blames the EU's leaders for keeping Turkey out and thereby helping push the country toward authoritarianism.
Are you hopeful that the Kurdish peace process will produce results?
I am not very optimistic, and there are two reasons for that. The first one is the way the government and the president…
Background
The power struggle within the Turkish leadership has become manifest with President Tayyip Erdogan on one side and Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu on the other fighting over the list of candidates for the 7 June general elections. Davutoglu is supported by heavyweights in the ruling party like Bülent Arinc and Besir Atalay. Meanwhile, Erdogan has pushed through his candidates, among them his son-in-law, the businessman Berat Albayrak. Erdogan would need a minimum of 367 MPs (out of a total of 550) to swiftly change the constitution and introduce a full-blown presidental system, or a three-fifths majority (330 MPs) to force parliament to call a referendum on a new constitution. None of these scenarios seems likely according to the polls, leaving Erdogan and the country in a limbo for the rest of his first term, which ends in 2019.
