Violence breaks out ahead of June 24 parliamentary and presidential elections
Supporters of Turkish presidential candidate Meral Aksener were attacked in Istanbul on Sunday, a day after an ally of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan suggested she had links to a group Ankara deems a terrorist organization.
Eight people were injured, including four that were stabbed, at a campaign station for Aksener’s IYI Party, Hurriyet Daily News reported.
The attackers allegedly were backers of the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), which has formed an electoral alliance with Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP).
MHP Leader Devlet Bahceli over the weekend called for a government investigation into whether a list of signatures Aksener obtained to qualify for the presidential vote contained names of individuals linked to exiled cleric Fethullah Gulen’s network, which has been blacklisted in Turkey.
Ankara accuses Gulen of masterminding the failed June 2016 coup, a charge he denies.
Bahceli also tweeted on Saturday that he would not directly criticize Aksener because she is a woman, but that she should nevertheless “know her place.”
Aksener, a former interior minister, is seen as a significant challenger to Erdogan because of her nationalist appeal which will help her compete for votes among his right-wing base.
Last week, her new IYI Party formed an alliance with three other opposition parties for the parliamentary elections, potentially allowing them to gain more seats with a view to counter-balancing the power of the president in a new political system that will come into effect after the vote.
The bloc is expected to include the main opposition Republican People’s Party, the Islamist Saadet Party, and the Democrat Party.
Joining forces will give the smaller parties a greater chance of surpassing the ten percent electoral threshold required to enter parliament.
The Deputy Leader of CHP, Veli Agbaba, told The Media Line that his secular party’s voters understand the need to cooperate with religious and conservative politicians because of what he described as shared principles.
“All of us who join the alliance defend parliamentary democracy, defend pluralism against one man [Erdogan], defend freedom of expression and human rights,” he stated.
“Everyone will keep their own political views and also come together for common purposes.”
The alliance’s platform reportedly will include up to eight articles outlining tenets such as the separation of powers between government branches and the importance of maintaining an independent judiciary in order to uphold the rule of law.
The parliamentary election will be held on June 24, the same day as the presidential election in which opposition parties will run their own candidates, although Erdogan is expected to win handily.
Aksener will be her IYI Party’s presidential candidate, whereas CHP confirmed that its contender will be Muharrem Ince, a senior lawmaker who has served in parliament since 2002. He is popular with the party’s base, which is crucial to attracting a high voter turnout.
Bringing as many voters as possible to the polls is important for the opposition because it will increase the likelihood of a second round in the presidential race, which occurs if no individual candidate receives more than half the initial vote.
The pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), which is not in the opposition alliance, announced that its former leader Selahattin Demirtas will challenge for the presidency despite currently being jailed and on trial.
The make-up of the next government is of particular significance due to last year’s referendum in Turkey, which granted the president new powers as of the June vote—including the authority to dissolve parliament with enough support from legislators.
Osman Erturk Ozel, a parliamentary candidate for the IYI Party in the city of Izmir, predicted that the opposition alliance will gain a combined 60 additional mandates by joining forces. He further stressed that it is important for the parties to work together to prevent Erdogan from assuming greater powers, which he deems a threat to the country.
“If we will not have enough strong [opposition] in the parliament, it will create another problem for the future of Turkey. So to overcome that problem, we have to create more and more strong opposition to the ruling [President] Tayipp Erdogan,” he asserted to The Media Line.
Louis Fishman, Assistant Professor in History at Brooklyn College CUNY and an expert on Turkish politics, explained that the new bloc may allow the CHP to exceed its traditional 25-30 percent support for the first time. He added that the more votes the opposition gets, the more it undercuts the AKP’s image as the lone power in parliament.
“[AKP is] going to have a challenge of capturing the imagination of people…[in order to convince them] that they are the only option,” Fishman said. “The government thought it was going to catch the opposition off guard.… What we’re seeing now is the opposition is really succeeding and gaining some momentum and I think that was unexpected.”
Deputy Prime Minister Bekir Bozdağ criticized the alliance for only being about “opposition to Recep Tayyip Erdoğan,” Hurriyet reported, an accusation seemingly reinforced by IYI candidate Ozel who stated that the formation of the opposition alliance was motivated by a desire to resist Erdogan.
“In today’s Turkey, everyone thinks that there are two sides of the political situation. The one side is the ruling party and Tayyip Erodgan, and [then] the others. It’s a really a terrible situation,” he said.
“The one ideology in our next election is defeating this ruling party and Tayyip Erdogan.”