Page 25 - TURKRptOct19

‘Impossible for Turkey to stop buying oil and gas from Iran despite US sanctions threat’ says Erdogan on flight back from New York. Speaking to reporters on the flight, Erdogan reportedly said Turkey was not afraid of possible US sanctions over its trade with Iran. He added that Ankara did not want to drop its cooperation with Tehran.
Turkey’s next elections are not scheduled until 2023 but there is some speculation Erdogan might try to use the credit taps to secure an economic bounce that he could exploit in snap elections to consolidate his presidency before opponents such as Babacan get up a head of steam.
Turkey’s former economy czar Babacan ‘planning to create own party in December to challenge Erdogan’. Turkey’s former economy czar Ali Babacan is reportedly planning to create his own political party in December to challenge long-time ruler President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
Former prime minister Ahmet Davutoglu, once seen as Erdogan’s right- hand man, said on September 13 that he has resigned from the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP).
Five other lawmakers resigned from the AKP alongside Davutoglu.
Erdogan’s AKP reportedly faces more defections after losing as many as 840,000 members in the last year.
Reuters on September 27 quoted former party loyalists on the matter.
The AKP relies on an alliance with the ultra-nationalist MHP for its parliamentary majority. It would be vulnerable even if it only lost a few seats to new parties set up by either Babacan or Davutoglu.
“Virtually every day colleagues who have taken roles in the party since the first day are choosing a new path,” a former senior official who resigned from the party was quoted as saying by Reuters. “We used to be a party where there was considerable consultation but there is not a trace of that left. Many friends want to make a new start in Babacan’s or Davutoglu’s party.”
The AKP was launched in 2001 as an Islamist-rooted party with a pro-Western and neoliberal market approach. It has 291 MPs in the 600-seat parliament.
Official data shows huge membership of the party slid to 9.87mn by early September from 10.72mn in August last year.
In a speech to party officials earlier this month, Erdogan played down the decline. He said that 95% of the fall was due to deaths of members and that membership was still more than 10 million.
However, the news agency cited Gareth Jenkins of the Stockholm-based Institute for Security and Development Policy as observing: “Erdogan’s popularity over the last seven years...is generally on a declining trend, artificially boosted by one-off events, to the point where it looks irreversible.”
“He [Erdogan] has become more disconnected from the expertise and competence within the AK Party, increasingly surrounded by ‘yes’ men,” Jenkins added.
Istanbul’s opposition mayor exhibits hundreds of cars hired by AKP predecessors to demonstrate ‘squandered public funds’.
The main opposition CHP’s Istanbul chairwoman was sentenced to nearly 10 years in prison for insulting the president and spreading “terror propaganda”. Canan Kaftancioglu, 47, was convicted mainly over tweets which date back several years. She has said the charges were politically motivated and remains free pending an appeal.
25 TURKEY Country Report October 2019 www.intellinews.com