Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Sunday rejected the accusations made by the country’s major opposition alliance against the legality of his candidacy for the May 14 presidential elections by assuring that the change in the country’s system of government qualifies him for a new mandate.
The coalition formed by Nation Alliance, Turkey’s main opposition coalition, questioned that Erdogan was committing an irregularity by running again because he has already served the two terms stipulated by the Constitution by winning the 2014 and 2018 elections.
This Sunday, by contrast, Erdogan has stuck to the legal interpretation offered by his Justice and Development Party (AKP), understanding that he has served only one term, the one received in 2018, because the country’s political transformation to a presidential model the previous year represented a clean slate on the lengths of stay in power.
«Turkey was transformed into a new system of government through the 2018 elections, which means a restart of the system itself. Therefore, by reason and law, the president who was elected in 2018 is the first president of this new system,» Erdogan has indicated at a rally in the Aegean province of Denizili.
Erdogan took the opportunity to criticize the opposition for waiting until the last moment to denounce the validity of his candidacy. «I have been president for four and a half years since then, where have you been all this time?» the leader questioned about the victory of his 2017 constitutional amendment referendum in this regard, «so clear that it leaves no room for doubt.»
Legal experts consulted by the Duvar news portal side with the opposition: Erdogan could only appear again in the event that elections were called by Parliament with 360 votes in favor — out of the total 600 seats in the House –.
Such a case could not happen because the government coalition he leads, the People’s Alliance, has only 335 seats, recalls Korkut Kanadoglu, a lawyer specializing in constitutional law.
Source: (EUROPA PRESS)
