Roundup: Ahead of snap polls, Turks want coalition rule to confront challenges

Contrary to what Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) are hoping for, voters and analysts in Turkey alike prefer a strong coalition emerging from Sunday's snap legislative election to confront the challenges facing the country.

"After 13 years of the Justice and Development Party's single-party domination, Turkey needs to be ruled by a broad-based coalition and the society needs to act together more than ever," claimed Suleyman Sensoy, head of the Turkish Asian Center for Strategic Researches (TASAM).

The election was called after the AKP lost its majority status in the June 7 polls and ensuing coalition talks failed.

The caretaker government headed by the AKP has since renewed fighting with the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) in southeastern Turkey and northern Iraq and joined the U.S.-led air raids on Islamic State (IS) targets inside Syria.

A sense of terror has gripped the country in the face of a series of bombing attacks, with the deadliest one in modern Turkey's history hitting the national capital of Ankara on Oct. 10, killing 102 people.

"The Nov. 1 elections have vital importance," Erdogan cautioned on Monday in a meeting with a group of village chiefs. "Turkey should proceed on its way by rebuilding in a stronger way the environment of stability and security which was jeopardized on June 7."

Erdogan and the AKP are betting on the party to retain its governing majority, a status it had held since 2002, to form a single-party government and realize the president's vision of a presidential system like that in the United States and France.

With recent opinion polls showing a slim chance for the AKP, analysts and voters also said "no" to the prospective.

Facing a deep polarization, which pits Turks against Kurds and secularists against Islamists, Turkey needs to be ruled by a coalition rather than a single-party government to overcome its problems, analysts agreed.

Despite an increase of one point or two in votes for the AKP as shown in opinion polls, analysts agreed that it would be still quite difficult for the party to garner 276 seats needed for it to govern on its own.

"Even AKP would win enough votes to establish a single-party government, I still insist that a coalition would be the better choice for solving Turkey's problem," Sensoy from TASAM told Xinhua.

"And most probably AKP and CHP (Republican People's Party) will form the coalition government," he predicted.

In his view, a coalition offers the best chance of solving Turkey's foreign policy problems, including the Syrian conflict that is creating a huge exodus of refugees into Turkey and Europe as well as Ankara's stalled accession talks with the European Union (EU).

Deep polarization is posing serious threat to peace and stability of both Turkey and the region, said Merve Ozdemirkiran, a scholar from the department of political science in Bahcesehir University.

Turkey is seen as a geopolitical force in the Middle East along with the Arab nations, Iran and Israel, with its instability having implications on the whole region and beyond.

The fact that Turkey could not be united even in the aftermath of the Ankara suicide bombings has caused a great alarm in the country.

"What we are experiencing today isn't a simple political polarization," Ozdemirkiran told Xinhua. "It is a social polarization, which is way too dangerous from the former one."

In her view, a coalition government will play a conciliatory role as parties will only compromise over a coalition.

Erdogan and his AKP party have been accused of pursuing a policy of inflaming nationalist sentiment against the country's Kurdish minority.

"That's why a coalition government is urgently needed and a normalization process should urgently be started by the coalition government," stressed Ozdemirkiran.

Another point that analysts cited over the necessity of a coalition is the AKP government's unwillingness to combat the threat posed by the IS, on which the government had blamed the Ankara bombings and other attacks.

The AKP has been criticized by the international community for helping Islamic State to fight against the Kurdish militants in northern Syria, with a view to preventing the establishment of a Kurdish state there.

Analysts argued that a coalition will offer a chance for Turkey to launch an effective struggle against the IS, as Turkish security forces are hitting hard only on the PKK forces.

Voters are adapting as well to the idea of a coalition government in Turkey, polls show.

"Previously, Turkish society was considering the rule of a coalition government as a disaster," Ihsan Aktas, head of opinion poll center GENAR, told Xinhua. "But now people get used to the idea."

Turks who spoke to Xinhua in Istanbul's busiest district of Besiktas all agreed that Turkish society suffers most from a deep polarization and the best solution would be a coalition government emerging from the upcoming polls.

"It will be good if a leftist coalition will be formed," said 19-year-old Ender Tanyeri. In his view, polarization and terrorism are Turkey's biggest problems and "the coalition will be the only solution."

A retired man also argued that a coalition would be in the benefit of the country.

"People are miserable," he said. "There are children on the streets bagging, Turks or Syrians. God knows. They are five or six year old girls."

If, however, coalition talks fail again after Sunday's polls, the country would be dragged into a deeper chaos, Ozdemirkiran warned. Endit