Page 17 - TURKRptMay19

dreams. He is a cheap bureaucrat with no popular base. The West loved him since he was a useful idiot.
On July 15, 2016, an attempt at a military coup d’etat occurred.
In October 2016, Bahceli urged the turning of the de facto presidency into a de jure institution.
In January 2017, when the required constitutional amendment proposal for that transition moved to the debate stage in parliament, the sequence of terror attacks abruptly ended.
On March 31, 2019, the AKP lost the Istanbul municipality in the local elections.
On election night, the AKP’s candidate for the Istanbul mayoralty, ex-PM Binali Yildirim, held a press briefing, during which he told reporters that he had won at the ballot box.
There was later speculation that Erdogan’s son-in-law and finance minister, Berat Albayrak, ordered Yildirim to hold the press call to inform reporters that he was the winner after AKP headquarters learnt that the party had lost Istanbul. Yildirim allegedly rejected Albayrak’s order, but then obeyed after receiving a phone call from Erdogan.
Erdogan and the Albayraks. There is ongoing speculation that Erdogan nowadays takes all his decisions only with Albayrak and his son-in-law’s brother, Serhat Albayrak, and doesn’t consider the input of anyone else.
However, Erdogan and his inner management had an unexpected problem presented by this particular election. At all previous polls, they claimed their victory during the early hours that followed election night, and the CHP accepted the result. But this time round, the opposition candidate in Istanbul, Ekrem Imamoglu, and the CHP’s Istanbul head, Canan Kaftancioglu, managed to collect all signed-off documents on the votes cast in the city. It was the first time the CHP had achieved such a thing.
Following Yildirim’s premature claim of a triumph, Erdogan was not seen in the media for a while.
Imamoglu, as it turned out, was not awarded his mandate for Turkey’s most powerful mayoralty until April 17. Interestingly, technicalities meant the High Election Board (YSK) had to provide him with his mandate to make possible the admission of the AKP’s “extraordinary objection” and request to annul the poll. A final ruling is awaited from the YSK.
Call for “Turkey Alliance”. On April 19, Erdogan called for a “Turkey Alliance”. Commentators speculated that amid the country’s financial turmoil he was seeking to palm off some of the responsibility for economic management on the CHP, should it prove so foolish as to accept his extended hand. (recall the coalition talks after June 7, 2015 mentioned above).
On April 20, the PKK was back in the news. Four Turkish soldiers were killed in clashes.
Erdogan’s “Turkey Alliance” could of course be a smart move as the complete collapse of the economy is approaching due to the policies pursued by his son-in-law since last September. Giving the CHP an economic brief would save Erdogan from full responsibility for the upcoming economic ruin.
But on April 21, Bahceli ruled out the “Turkey Alliance” option. “The MHP continues to see the Istanbul mayoral poll as a matter of national survival and
17 TURKEY Country Report May 2019 www.intellinews.com