Turkish govt. Ready to launch constitutional changes after winning support by nationalists

Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) has received support from an opposition party of nationalists effectively paving the way for a shift toward an executive presidential system.

Devlet Bahceli, the leader of the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), signaled his backing for a proposal by AKP’s co-founder and Prime Minister Binali Yildirim in a series of tweets on Thursday.

Bahceli described Yildirim’s proposal to shift to a presidential system as both “positive” and “reasonable.”

Yildirim said on Friday that the ruling party and the MHP would now “introduce a presidential system.”

Turkey’s current political system is a parliamentary one, in which executive powers rest with the prime minister and his government. However, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has harbored ambitions to turn the political system into a presidential one.

The MHP’s support for the bid to launch constitutional changes was crucial. With 317 seats at the 550-strong parliament, the AKP needed to get more MPs on board to reach the 330 seat threshold required at the parliament for launching constitutional changes, themselves requiring approval in a referendum.

The nationalists control 40 seats at the Turkish parliament.

The referendum would decide on whether to shift power to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, one of the founders of the AKP who himself served as Turkey’s prime minister from 2003 to 2014.

The MHP strongly opposed a shift to an executive presidential system before a failed coup attempt in July. The botched coup seemed to have left an impression.

Meanwhile, the Republican People’s Party (CHP) and the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), with 133 and 59 seats at the parliament respectively, have strongly opposed a shift to an executive presidential system.

The two opposition parties say such a system would vest more powers in Erdogan, whom they already see as authoritarian.

Erdogan has dismissed his characterizations by opponents as dictatorial.

“I don’t care if they call me a dictator or whatever else. It goes in one ear, out of the other,” he said earlier in November.

The Turkish government recently arrested several leaders and lawmakers from the pro-Kurdish HDP as part of its ongoing crackdown against Kurds.