Turkey’s ruling party, known as the AKP, has pushed a set of constitutional measures through parliament that would grant the party’s leader, President Erdogan, virtually autocratic powers. The measures are set to be submitted to a national referendum in April. Michael Daventry writes:
By abolishing Turkey’s long-established system of collective cabinet government, the AKP says it will stabilize the country and streamline decision-making. But the proposed law will pool power in the hands of the president and dramatically reduce the top job’s accountability to parliament. In effect, it codifies a system of one-man rule for Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
It wipes out the century-old role of prime minister and transfers its functions to the president. It strips Turkish MPs of their duty to scrutinize the executive and abolishes the vote of confidence needed for governments to take office. It grants the presidency new powers to appoint directly a vast range of public officials—cabinet ministers, provincial governors, and judges to the highest courts in the land.
Simply put, the government’s plans . . . are designed to strengthen the individual over the collective. Powers and duties that are presently distributed among the prime minister, the cabinet, and senior judges are being rerouted to one man.
The AKP says the proposed law will equip a strong leader to generate the stability that people in Turkey crave. . . . That message has a powerful appeal for a country like Turkey, which has been rocked by political turmoil, the need to care for millions of Syrian refugees, and repeated terror attacks that have killed one person on average for each day of the last eighteen months. But it is difficult to argue the system is not being tailored specifically for Erdogan himself, not least because it eliminates the few remaining checks on his power.
Read more on Telegraph: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/01/19/recep-tayyip-ergodan-make-virtual-dictator-turkey/