{"id":361736,"date":"2018-05-18T08:05:38","date_gmt":"2018-05-18T07:05:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/erdogan-and-turkeys-elections\/"},"modified":"2018-05-18T08:05:38","modified_gmt":"2018-05-18T07:05:38","slug":"erdogan-and-turkeys-elections","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/erdogan-and-turkeys-elections\/","title":{"rendered":"Erdogan and Turkey\u2019s Elections"},"content":{"rendered":"<div itemprop=\"articleBody\">\n<div id=\"attachment_102187\" style=\"width: 520px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-102187\" src=\"https:\/\/uziiw38pmyg1ai60732c4011-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com\/wp-content\/dropzone\/2018\/05\/13384328215_0a806a0dee_z.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"510\" height=\"410\"  \/><\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-caption-text\">Photo by thierry ehrmann | <a href=\"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/2.0\/\">CC BY 2.0<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>When Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan called for a presidential and parliamentary election June 24\u2014jumping the gun by more than a year\u2014the outcome seemed foreordained: the country is under a state of emergency, Erdogan has imprisoned more than 50,000 of his\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2018\/05\/06\/world\/europe\/turkey-cumhuriyet.html\">opponents<\/a>, dismissed 140,000 from their jobs, jailed a presidential candidate, and launched an attack on Syria\u2019s Kurds, that is\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2018\/01\/26\/world\/europe\/turkey-syria-border-war.html\">popular<\/a>\u00a0with most Turks.<\/p>\n<p>But Erdogan\u2019s seemingly overwhelming strength is not as solid as it appears, and the moves the President is making to insure a victory next month may come back to haunt him in the long run.<\/p>\n<p>There is a great deal at stake in the June vote. Based on the outcome of a referendum last year, Turkey will move from a parliamentary system to one based on a powerful executive presidency. But the referendum vote was\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2018\/04\/02\/world\/middleeast\/erdogan-turkey.html\">very close<\/a>, and there is widespread suspicion that Erdogan\u2019s narrow victory was fraudulent.<\/p>\n<p>This time around Turkey\u2019s President is taking no chances. The electoral law has been taken out of the hands of the independent electoral commission and turned over to civil servants, whose employment is dependent on the government.\u00a0 The state of emergency will make campaigning by anything but Erdogan\u2019s Justice and Development Party (AKP) and its ally, the National Action Party (MHP), problematical.<\/p>\n<p>But Erdogan called for early elections not because he is strong, but because he is nervous about the AKP\u2019s strong&#8230;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.counterpunch.org\/2018\/05\/17\/erdogan-and-turkeys-elections\/\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Photo by thierry ehrmann | CC BY 2.0 When Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan called for a presidential and parliamentary election June 24\u2014jumping the gun by more than a year\u2014the outcome seemed foreordained: the country is under a state of emergency, Erdogan has imprisoned more than 50,000 of his\u00a0opponents, dismissed 140,000 from their jobs, jailed [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-361736","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/361736","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=361736"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/361736\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=361736"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=361736"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=361736"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}