Who will be the next president of Turkey and will this country return to parliamentary system?

As the most vital elections in Turkey’s history are approaching, everyone is talking about who will be the next president of this country. This is certainly one of the most important issues on the agenda, but the question of whether Turkey will return to the parliamentary regime and which political alliance/coalition would/could be in power after it does is another important topic often discussed. 

Judging by great majority of the impartial polls conducted in recent months, the current government seems to have lost substantial support (hence votes) due to its “not very successful” performance (as expressed by many experts) in foreign and domestic politics, and economic matters, in particular. Polls show this loss is still ongoing and it seems that if this trend continues, the AK Party may not stand chances of winning a new victory in the first election to come. Furthermore, the current president does not seem to have good chances to be elected again in the next election either – judging on same poll results again..

This being the case, the current ruling coalition (Cumhur Alliance) has been working on all possibilities to find a solution to this quite unfavorable situation. Let’s also note that among them is the formula to amend the electoral code.

Meanwhile, it seems that the CUMHUR Aliance (ruling AK Party and partner MHP) have focused on the question “who will the presidential candidate of the NATION Alliance (CHP and Good Party, mainly) in the elections to come”. They would like to know if this person will  be opposition leader KILICDAROGLU or the very successful Mayor of Istanbul Ekrem IMAMOGLU (who walked all over the AK Party candidate in local elections) or else the important partner of the opposition, Meral Aksener, the leader of the GOOD PARTY, to challenge ERDOGAN in the presidential election to come in 2023 latest – and most likely in 2022.

But why are parties in the ruling bloc so badly focused on the answer to above question? This is simply because the government wants to find out about the answer to said question earliest possible so that they have a good chance to politically wear out concerned candidate (of opposition) in the eyes of the electorate until elections to come. To their hard luck however, they cannot succeed since the opposition does not announce the name of such candidate, so early.

Still, based on most recent statements of Meral AKSENER (Good Party leader) on television last night, the number of candidates seems to have gone down to 3 and even two, as AKSENER declared she would not be among the alternatives to challenge Erdogan in the presidential election to come. This said, the number of alternatives left are KILICDAROGLU (CHP Leader), IMAMOGLU and Mansur YAVAS (Mayor of Ankara). Imamoglu and Yavas seem to stand very good chances of winning the election if shown as candiates and KILICDAROGLU also seems to be doing well ahead of Erdogan, currently (all these comments to be based on poll results, mentioned above).

On the other hand, AKSENER also stated that she would aim to be the next PM of Turkey – provided the political system of Turkey is switched back to parliamentary system.

As for the question if Turkey will go back to parliamentary system, the opposition group, Nation Alliance headed by CHP (with Good Party partnering) is certainly determined to establish the parliamentary system in the country, again.

At the end of the day, one thing is for certain: Turkey is destined to go through a very unusual period in the coming months – a period on which the country’s future depends as it has never done so, before.