Roundup: Turkey pushes for executive presidency with snap elections

ANKARA, April 18 (Xinhua) -- Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Wednesday announced Turkey will hold snap presidential and parliamentary elections on June 24.

His statement came after a meeting with the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) leader Devlet Bahceli, who on Tuesday made a call to the government for early elections which was scheduled in November 2019.

"Changing to the executive presidency has become urgent for the future of our country, Erdogan will be the presidential candidate of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP)," he said.

"We have widely discussed the proposal of Mr. Bahceli in our executive board. We have decided to give a positive response to this proposal on holding early elections," he added.

"We are immediately launching the legal process regarding the matter, and without a doubt, Turkey's Supreme Election Board will also start preparations for the elections as soon as possible," the president said.

Erdogan underlined that Turkey's ongoing military operations into Syria, regional developments and macroeconomic necessities require an "urgency" for the country to immediately start the implementation of the executive-presidency model instead of waiting for Nov 2019.

The two parties, AKP and MHP, are likely to submit a bill for snap polls to the parliament, Prime Minister Binali Yildirim said Wednesday.

The AKP-MHP seats at the parliament are sufficient to vote for early elections, but the government also has to legislate the law that regulates the procedures and principles of the presidential elections.

The ruling party calls for snap polls because they are not able to rule the country, opposition Republican People's Party (CHP) spokesperson Bulent Tezcan said.

"We are ready for any elections," he said, but the main opposition party has yet to announce its presidential nominee. CHP leader is likely to run for the presidential elections.

Good (Iyi) Party leader Meral Aksener on Wednesday said she will run for presidential elections and will collect 100,000 electoral signatures to be a candidate.

Turkey is sliding toward a political, economic and legitimacy crisis and snap polls is inevitable for the AKP-MHP," pro-Kurdish Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) co-chair Sezai Temelli said.

Temel Karamollaoglu, the head of the Islamist Felicity Party (SP), said that they want to have a meeting with Abdullah Gul, the former president and one of the founders of the ruling AKP, when an "opportunity" has arisen.

The SP had previously hinted nominating Gul as their presidential candidate in the upcoming polls.

The move for snap polls, 17 months before the scheduled date, by the nationalist party and the ruling party was unexpected. The government repeatedly insisted that the elections will be held at the scheduled time.

The elections, which were due to be held in fall 2019, are important as a new executive presidency agreed in a referendum in 2017 will come into force.

The nationalist party long before has announced that it will unconditionally back President Erdogan's candidacy in the crucial presidential polls which would grant the president formally sweeping powers.

The MHP leader aligned his party to Erdogan's ruling AKP after a failed coup of July 2016. The two parties formed a pre-election alliance "People's Alliance" in February, prepared legal basis for the alliance and stepped up for changes in regulations in election procedures, but the process has not finalized yet.

For the part of the AKP, Erdogan needs every possible vote to get elected as the executive-president, which requires at least 50 percent plus one vote in the first round.

Erdogan won nearly 52 percent of the vote in the 2014 presidential polls. Some 55 million Turkish people will be eligible to vote for the president. Enditem