Erdogan leads rare outreach campaign to opposition to try to stay in power, analysts say

Turkish president attempts to seek cooperation to establish new constitution after local election defeats

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoan is trying to cooperate with the secular opposition to create a new constitution so he can run for office, analysts told The Media Line. He is expected to meet the opposition leader in the coming days.

Erdoan met with ZGR ZEL, the leader of the main opposition Republican People's Party (CHP), on May 2 after saying he wanted a relaxation of the policy, also known as normalization.

It was the first meeting between the Turkish president and the CHP leader in almost eight years.

Erdoan has repeatedly said he wants to create a new constitution, and support from the opposition party could be crucial to achieving this.

This change in tone, after years of imprisonment of opposition politicians and journalists, came after Erdoans' Justice and Development Party (AKP) suffered its biggest electoral defeat in local elections nationals of March 31.

Ozgur Nlhisarckl, director of the German Marshall Fund office in Ankara, told The Media Line that Erdoan's main goal is to be able to run for office, which requires parliament to either call early elections or amend the constitution , which requires the support of the opposition. evenings.

The Turkish president could try to hold a referendum with the support of small parties to change the constitution, but this would be risky after the results of local elections.

Erdoans is just trying to diversify his options, he likes to have options.

Erdoans is just trying to diversify his options, he likes to have options, Unlhisarcckl said. He also said Turks want competing parties to talk to each other and believes Erdoan could make concessions to the opposition to gain support for a new constitution. I think it's a very good sign, even if it doesn't produce any results, because, first of all, when leaders talk to each other, I think it will trickle down to their voters as well. Perhaps this will help alleviate the deep polarization in Türkiye.

He warned that this could backfire on the CHP if it withheld its criticism of Erdoan, but zel has not yet done so.

Meanwhile, ZEL took a strong stance against Erdoan on Wednesday, saying there would be no easing or normalization of policy as long as elected mayors were replaced by those appointed by the government, that protests would be prevented and that the constitution would not be respected. the Constitutional Court, Hurriyet reported.

The same day, Erdoan defended the dismissal of a Kurdish mayor accused of working with the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), a militant group in Turkey that Ankara, Washington and the EU have classified as a terrorist organization. Anyone who respects the red lines of the law and our democracy and does not deviate from legitimacy can freely engage in politics in this country if there is no legal obstacle, Erdoan said, according to the Duvar information site.

So far, Zel has rejected the idea of ​​supporting a new constitution. “If the ruling party respects the current constitution, we would be about to discuss a new one. We are a long way from that at the moment,” he told Reuters last month. He also raised the possibility of early elections, putting Erdoan under pressure.

Nlhisarcckl also believed that Erdoan was trying to embolden the CHP leader so that he would want to run for president.

Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamolu and Ankara Mayor Mansur Yava are both more popular figures in the polls, and the fact that neither of them was a candidate in the presidential election of last year is considered one of the main reasons for the CHP's defeat.

Aydin Sezer, an Ankara-based foreign policy analyst, acknowledged that Erdoan was trying to create a power struggle within the CHP to empower Zel to consider running for president. He also believed that Erdoan's top priority was to amend the constitution so that he could run for president again.

The old escalation policies will not benefit him.

Sezer told The Media Line that public discontent with the economy and poor local election results pushed Erdoan to contact the opposition. The old escalation policies will not benefit him, Sezer said.