Turkey faces November snap election

He said he would confer with the speaker of parliament to make the call after the 45-day period to form a government ends Sunday night.

“We will take our country to early elections“, Erdogan said.

“God willing, Turkey will have the elections again on November 1”, Erdogan stated.

Imminent snap polls would obligate Erdogan to form an acting “election government” with members from the four parties present in the Turkish parliament.

The pro-Kurdish HDP won 13 per cent of votes in June, helping to deny a wounded ruling party the supermajority it sought to transform Erdogan’s office into the nation’s power center.

“I think there is no doubt what Erdogan wants is a do-over”, says Aaron Stein, a Turkey analyst at the Royal United Services Institute, a think tank. It was expected that President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan would task Republican People’s Party (CHP) leader Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu with forming the government after this, however, Erdoğan signaled on Tuesday that he will not go down that path.

Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) lost its overall majority in June for the first time since it came to power in 2002. The President of a parliamentary republic like Turkey is supposed to remain above party politics and serve as the largely ceremonial head of state, so Kilicdaroglu, Bahceli and Demirtas’ stances on the issue are completely reasonable – to everyone except Mr. Erdogan, of course. In one instance, in January previous year Syria-bound trucks belonging to MIT were stopped by the local gendarmerie, but the public prosecutors and the gendarmerie commander involved have themselves been arrested and prosecuted for “attempting to topple or incapacitate the government” and “exposing information regarding the security and political activities of the state”.

The situation is unprecedented – the mainly Muslim but staunchly secular Turkey has never seen repeat snap elections after the collapse of coalition talks.

“We’re talking about a government that will work for 15-20 days and a cabinet that will at most meet once or twice”, said HDP spokesman Ayhan Bilgen, saying his party’s executive committee would meet next week to discuss the election cabinet.

Both CHP and MHP have opposed a new ballot and said they would stay out of an election government.

“Our taking part in an election government is not meant to be a partner in the AKP’s government”, Demirtaş said, in remarks published in daily Habertürk on August. 20.