Ankara, 24 Dec (EFE).- The candidacy of the President of Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, to repeat the office for the third time in next June’s elections has opened a debate between those who argue that the Constitution provides for a maximum of two terms and those who say this rule cannot be applied on this occasion.
Erdogan, who was prime minister between 2003 and 2014, was elected president that year, a then-representative post with little executive powers, albeit elected by universal suffrage for the first time.
In 2017, he pushed through a constitutional reform that eliminated the prime minister and gave the president control of the government and broad powers to choose and remove senior officials.
In 2018 he was re-elected president with this new arrangement, becoming head of government, as well as head of state.
Professor Süheyl Batum, one of the most prestigious constitutional lawyers in Turkey, argues today in the Cumhuriyet newspaper that since 2007 the Constitution establishes a maximum of two five-year terms for the president, and that the 2017 amendment has not changed this provision.
“If Turkey is a state of law, Erdogan cannot be elected a third time,” explains an expert.
The honorary president of the Supreme Court, Hamdi Yaver Aktan, shares the same opinion.
Erdogan’s supporters, on the other hand, believe that the 2017 reform reset the counter by substantially changing the nature of the position.
Constitutional jurist Cem Duran Uzun believes that the concept of “president” under the current constitution in force in 2014 and the current one is so different that the two-term rule cannot be applied.
Since the 2018 elections were organized under a different law than the previous one, and a non-retroactive one, Erdogan is now in his first term as head of state and government, he concludes.
“The debate would not even take place if the term ‘chief’ were used instead of ‘president’ in the Constitution now,” Duran wrote in an essay for the SETAV analysis center.
Metin Günday, another well-known law professor, clarified that Erdogan could run for the third time in the presidential elections if Parliament calls early elections, before the date scheduled for June 2023.
Several Turkish media say that Erdogan’s party, the Islamist AKP, intends to bring forward the elections using the absolute majority it, together with its ultranationalist partners, has in Parliament. EFE extension
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