And The Winner Of Turkey’s Presidential Election Is… Populism
The motto of Turkey´s Aug. 10 presidential elections is “People electing the President.” In 2008, the political crisis over the previous parliament’s failure to elect a president led to a series of constitutional amendments. The referendum for approving these amendments created a hybrid system. While the parliament remained in control of the legislative process, and the cabinet in control of the executive, the presidency gained political weight in symbolic terms as it was transformed into a post to be filled by direct election.
Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, whose party Justice and Development (AKP) has ruled Turkey since 2002, contends that he will be easily win the presidency with more than 50 percent of the first round votes. Polls suggest that Erdoğan is closely (or according to some others, not so closely) leading Ekmeleddin İhsanoğlu, the candidate of the two main opposition parties, the center-left People’s Republican Party (CHP) and the nationalist People’s Action Party (MHP). The third candidate is Selahattin Demirtaş, initially nominated by the fourth and nominally smallest party of the parliament, People’s Democracy Party (HDP), which is predominantly representative of the Kurdish minority.
As far as the legal framework is concerned, the presidency still has limited executive and legislative powers “on paper,” but the perceptions concerning the post have been altered.
Turning around political scientist Adam Przeworski’s well-known reference to “democracy” as the “only game in town,” populism has become the “only game” in Turkey’s presidential elections. In a way, the competition seems to be between competing populisms.
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http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/monkey-cage/wp/2014/08/08/and-the-winner-of-turkeys-presidential-election-is-populism/