PM says Turkey ill suited to coalition governments

PanARMENIAN.Net - Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said on Thursday, June 11, history had shown Turkey was ill suited to coalition governments but the ruling AK Party was open to all options after losing its parliamentary majority for the first time in a weekend election,

Sunday's vote ended more than a decade of single-party rule in the NATO member and EU candidate nation, plunging it into uncertainty and dealing a blow to President Tayyip Erdogan's ambitions for a more powerful executive role.

"We've used the coalition eras of the 1970s and 1990s as an example to show that coalitions are not suitable for Turkey and we still stand by that stance," Davutoglu said at a meeting of officials of the Islamist-rooted AKP in Ankara.

"However, with the current political picture ... We're open to any scenarios based on the latest developments."

Fractious coalitions in the 1990s undermined the economy and scuppered a series of International Monetary Fund economic aid program. Those traditional secular parties were devastated by an AKP avalanche victory in 2002.

Negotiations will be watched with concern by NATO allies that view Turkey as an important ally adjoining an increasingly unstable Middle East. Islamic State militants stand at its borders and violence flickers in its mainly Kurdish southeast.

Davutoglu said in an interview on state TV late on Wednesday that all options would be exhausted before an early election was considered, and made clear that Erdogan, constitutionally barred from party politics, would not be directly involved in efforts to build a coalition.

The comments were in themselves a sign of changing times in the AK Party where until recently public criticism of party founder Erdogan, even in implicit form, would have been unthinkable. Criticism in the media had become a risky affair, with many journalists jailed or sacked, Reuters notes.