Erdogan says will call November 1 snap Turkey polls

After the AKP lost parliamentary majority on June 7, Davutoglu was given the mandate to form a new government by Erdogan on July 9. He said he would hold talks with the parliament speaker after the 45-day legal period for forming a government ends Sunday.

“We will take our country to an early election“, Mr. Erdogan said in Ankara.

Davutoğlu formally gave up efforts to find a junior coalition partner for his ruling Justice and Development Party (AK Party) on Tuesday, more than two months after the party lost its overall majority for the first time since coming to power in 2002.

In a note to political parties, the country’s election commission proposed that any new election should be held on November. 1, according to AK Party officials.

The president’s declarations Friday come on the heels of a ruling by Turkey’s election board this week that it could shorten the constitutionally mandated 90-day period before an early election to 60 days.

“Can the president call early elections according to the constitution?”

Still, Mr. Erdogan said he would not delay the inevitable.

Meanwhile, some 50 Turkish soldiers and police have been killed in attacks blamed on the PKK, with their funerals a daily event on Turkish television.

On Wednesday, Erdogan said he would not hand the duty to form a new government to another party. He also attacked the main-opposition CHP for criticizing his $615 million presidential palace, saying he has no business with those who don’t respect the presidency.

An interim “election government” would see power shared between the four political parties in Parliament, who harbor deep ideological divides, a scenario likely to lead to stagnation in policy making.

The CHP and third-placed Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) have both so far refused to take part in such a unity government, leaving the fourth-placed Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) which the AKP accuses of being a front for the PKK. The date for the snap election is November 1.