TEPAV: “With this Constitution, Presidential Elections will Bring Crisis” It is assessed that, it is quite unlikely that a president who won more than 50% of the votes and a prime minister who won 35-40% of the votes can coexist without causing crises.

ANKARA - TEPAV stated that presidential elections will cause a crisis unless the constitution is amended and said: "It is quite unlikely that a president who won more than 50% of the votes and a prime minister who won 35-40% of the votes can coexist without causing crisis unless they hold the same world view."

Policy Note titled "A Brief Overview of the Government System Debates and the Characteristics of the Current Governmental system in Turkey" by Assoc. Prof. Levent Gönenç of Ankara University Faculty of Law was published.

The note expressed that Debates about the governmental system in Turkey never have lost popularity during the term of the 1982 Constitution and said: "Particularly in periods of coalition governments, when the constitutional system became dysfunctional due to crisis, views that the parliamentary system must be abandoned and replaced with a presidential or semi-presidential system had been voiced frequently and intensively." Stressing that with the constitutional amendment in 2007 that foresaw the direct election of the president, Turkey accepted one of the most fundamental elements of the presidential system, the note added:

"2007 constitutional is not an output or outcome of the governmental system debates carried out so far in Turkey. This amendment was the reflection of political reactions and strategies and an attitude reading "If we cannot solve this at the Parliament, we solve it with the ballot box" rather than of a thoroughly assessed and analyzed governmental system design. Problems that can be caused by the preference for such partial constitutional amendment about the governmental systems over an all-out governmental system design will be more visible when the issue is evaluated in the context of constitutional engineering."

Parliamentary with "President" System

TEPAV's note maintained:  "The system established after the constitutional amendment in 2007 is neither a parliamentary system since the president is directly elected nor a semi-presidential system since the current powers of the president are weaker than those of a president in a classical semi-presidential system." and expressed that this could be called a "parliamentary with 'president' system". The note added:

"In a parliamentary with 'president' system, directly elected president is deprived of the powers regarding the composition of the cabinet, the dismissal of the parliament or the executive processes in his/her own discretion. In fact, as a number of authors in the discipline stress, in the current formation, the system can function as parliamentary although the president is directly elected by the people. On the other hand, direct popular election of the president contradicts with the nature of the parliamentary system in which the president is elected by the parliament and is entitled to symbolic authorities. A presidency that directly enjoys the electorate's legitimacy but has symbolic powers is not only irrational but also prone to crises. In short, it is quite unlikely that a president who won more than 50% of the votes and a prime minister who won 35-40% of the votes can coexist without causing crisis unless they hold the same world view."

Pointing out that in such a system the candidates for presidency will also appear before the public with a political program, the study stressed that the powers of the president holds are inconvenient for realizing a certain political program. The note in this context said: "It is inevitable that the president will push his/her constitutional powers to be able to meet the promises." and continued:

"What is more important, in an effort to meet those promises, the president might completely ignore impartiality requirements. The worst case scenarios in this respect are that the president searches for proponents in the parliament; tends to form explicit/implicit alliances with political parties; and cooperates with the opposition to overthrow a government that contradicts with his/her world view. It is not hard to assess how harmful such attempts will be to the impartiality of the president. More importantly, the mentioned "rival political programs scenario" might even pave the way for a legitimacy crisis. In other words, the mentioned polarization which emerges in a milieu in which the president and the parliamentary majority (and therefore the government formed within) have different world views will most likely lock at the following question: "Who is the true representative of the people: the president or the parliament?" There is no doubt that each actor, as elected by the people, will think it has the right to legitimacy which will bring the system into a deadlock. This, say the least of it, is a crisis."

In the conclusion part, the study stated that the parliamentary with 'president' system not only will fail to resolve the governmental system debates in Turkey but also evoke new debates in the future and concluded: "This analysis reveals that the constitution making process must involve a comprehensive assessment and an all-out design for the governmental system. Partial amendments about the governmental system that are not discussed with reference to the predictable outcomes do not solve but generate crises. However, the constitution has to be the guarantee of the political system."