Of course you don’t need to read this column to know that. Turkey’s per capita GDP is only a fifth of that of Belgium. Our economy has been declared part of the “fragile five,” while Belgium is safely embedded in the EU’s currency and trade union. Belgium also has no neighbors like ISIL. In one respect however, we seem to be on track to join Belgium – we take our time with coalitions. After their December 2011 elections, it notoriously took the Belgians 541 days to form a coalition.

Turkey had its own elections on June 7 this year. The incumbent party lost its majority in parliament for the first time since 2002, which was very exciting to everyone involved. A month later, it seems a thick, sleepy haze has descended on Ankara. Having lived through decades of coalition-building processes in the past, I have to say that none as slowly as this one. There is an undeserved sense of ease in the air, an utter lack of urgency. It’s unsettling.

There is a lot at stake here. The election results presented a sorely needed opportunity for the fragile Turkish economy to start over again, to have a strong new story line. A slow transition risks that opportunity.

Why? Is it Ramadan? Fasting will have that collectively soporific effect, especially towards the end of the month. Ramadan moves 10 days a year, and hot summer Ramadans are especially though. June 21, the longest day of the year was part of the fasting month this year. The last time it was this long was about 30 years ago. I understand that things do slow down during Ramadans a bit, but it shouldn’t be this much, not when the stakes are this high. More than a month has passed since June 7. We are still waiting to see how Turkey is to be governed.

What has the government been saying? Nothing much really, they tell you a story about some technical details about the operation of the Parliament. The speaker needs to be elected first, they say, and then the administration of the new Parliament has to be set. That’s when you can get to a new government. The problem is that all of that took more than a month. We have yet to see a government that represents this new Parliament.

Meanwhile, the old government keeps meeting with the President. There must be reasons they are stalling the process other than their post-election chagrin, and it should make everyone else uneasy.

Turkey acts like Belgium, when it has nowhere near the luxuries that country possesses. The opposition should snap out of whatever haze they are in and move the process along.

This commentary was published in Hürriyet Daily News on 11.07.2015