More Turkish politics
As usual, I will have Taylan Bilgic’s weekly guest column later today, which was published yesterday at Hurriyet Daily News, with some comments from your friendly neighborhood economist right below the column. But before, I would like to highlight another interesting piece from yesterday’s Daily News. Murat Yetkin, editor-in-chief of the paper, uses the first quarter GDP figures to argue that “it is the economy, stupid“, i.e. good economic performance was behind the AKP’s success at the polls last month. He also gives a brief summary of the Party’s performance at the polls since 2002, again linking the ups and downs to the economy.
I agree with him generally, but I would argue that it’s not the economy, stupid, which seems to be the exact opposite of what Murat is saying. But as I explain in my Daily News column a couple of weeks ago, what I really mean to say is that it is not solely the economy. In fact, I spend half of the article in explaining why the economy is important in explaining the AKP’s success at the polls. But then I spend quite a bit of time why it isn’t enough by itself to explain the Party’s high votes.
Speaking of Turkish politics, I don’t think that an alliance between the nationalist MHP and the AKP would be possible, as the Economist is suggesting at its most recent issue- see my recent blog post for the background. It will be much easier to “transfer” 3 deputies to reach the magical 330 to be able to send their new Constitution to the Referendum. But the Economist is right to note that that it is not easy to find a solution for the CHP deputies in prison. Doing that might “discourage” prosecutors from going after other “suspects”. Similarly, there are a couple of thousand (nope, I am not kidding, sir!) held from the same charges as the Kurdish 5, i.e. the independent Kurdish deputies in prison, so releasing them could lead to demands for the release of all. So releasing them is probably even more difficult, from a political point of view, for the AKP.
BTW, you might be wondering if it is not weird for me to speak of the AKP releasing deputies and what not, as if the AKP controlled the courts. Well, don’t! Many Turks believe that the AKP has direct control over the courts, as evidenced most recently from the appointments from the High Board of Judges and Prosecutors. Besides, there are a couple of legal loopholes the AKP could make use of to have the deputies releases, “if it really wanted to”, that is:)…
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