Turkey’s Erdogan calls for swift creation of government

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has called on political party leaders to cast their egos aside and form a government as quickly as possible, days after the parliamentary polls that made his former party lose its single-party government.

Sunday’s election outcome, in which no party won an outright majority, means long calculations will be required to form a coalition government within 45 days after the official results are announced.

An early election will be called if political parties fail.

All three opposition parties in the parliament have said that they would not enter into a coalition with the Justice and Development Party (AK party), which is now led by Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, after Erdogan took over the constitutionally neutral presidential seat.

Speaking at an educational event on Thursday in his first public appearance after the polls, Erdogan said that nobody should doubt that he would carry out duties given to him by the constitution for a new government to be established.

“The ones who are doomed their egos, leaving Turkey without a government cannot answer this nation,” he said.

“We cannot allow the developments in the political area to escalate to a point to threatening our gains. This is our responsibility to our 78 million people. No politician has the right to say ‘me’, but only ‘us’.”

Erdogan had unofficially campaigned for his former party to get two-thirds majority in the polls in order to change the constitution and create a new presidential republic to replace the parliamentary system. 

No single-party government

However, the AK party, which governed the country alone for the past 13 years, failed even to achieve a simple majority, although it remained the biggest party.

The AK party won 41 percent of the vote, followed by the centre-left Republican People’s Party (CHP) with 25 percent, the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) at 16.5 percent, and the pro-Kurdish left-wing People’s Democracy Party (HDP), with 13 percent.

With this result, the AK party will have 258 seats in the 550-seat parliament, with the CHP getting 132, and the MHP and HDP securing 80 apiece. A coalition with more than 275 seats will form a government.

In his speech, Erdogan accused the West of bombing Arabs and Turkmens in Syria while supporting Kurdish “terrorist” groups which he said were taking their place.

Moderate Syrian rebels and Kurdish forces have been fighting the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) group holding the Syrian border town of Tel Abyad in recent days, sending thousands of people fleeing to Turkey.

Turkey is uncomfortable with gains by Kurdish YPG forces in Syria, saying they have links with the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which has fought a decades-long insurgency against the Turkish state.