Turkey's choice: Strong country, leadership

Turkey made its choice on June 24 and named her new President and Parliament members. The country now will be ruled with a Presidential system, where the President will be the head of the executive, without the help of a prime minister. The new system will not allow coalition governments, which means that the government will be able to act faster and more effectively. Legislation and executive will be more clearly divided, and the government will focus on its services while the parliament makes the laws and oversees the activities of the former. The president will work in tandem with the parliament for a problem-free ruling.

The President can hold the office for a maximum of two terms and the Ministers in the cabinet set up by the president cannot act as parliament members at the same time. The new system will also make it possible to indict the president with a parliamentary resolution.

The winner of the elections was Cumhur (Public) Alliance, a collaboration between AK Parti and MHP. At least 10% of the 52% that Mr. Tayyip Erdogan obtained in order to be the president, came from MHP voters. This shows that, even though the President has now more powers, the allegations of ‘one-man rule’ against him are untrue. From now on, AK Party will need to get the approval of MHP in its policies, which will make MHP a central player in the parliament.

AK Party-MHP alliance also means a stronger campaign against the terror group PKK and the introduction of stronger policies against plots targeting Turkey. This collaboration will particularly prevent the realization of the Greater Middle East project, which is devised to divide Middle East into smaller countries completely susceptible to exploitation. It is a known fact that this project was officially launched, in Iraq and Syria and now continues in a bid to divide the people of the Middle East. A new Middle East map published in the New York Times in 2013 predicts that five countries in the Middle East will be divided, giving birth to 14 smaller new countries. Many similar Middle East maps were prepared in the past, and the region was subsequently dismembered in line with those plans. The goal is creating a divided, unstable Middle East, where people are completely disconnected, and intimidation through violence, bombs and riots, to turn all the countries in the region into new Syrias, ultimately taking control of the entire Middle East. However, to achieve this goal, it is believed that strong and central countries of the region should be weakened, disallowing strong governments. Turkey is at top of the list.

For this reason, the architects of the Greater Middle East Project are focused on making Turkey weak and dependent. Riots like Gezi protests, or failed coup attempt of July 15, were a part of this plan. When they failed, credit rating institutions stepped in and used the rise of dollar as an excuse to show that Turkey is 'not suitable for investments’. The plan was to demonstrate and present Turkey’s economy as bankrupt in an attempt to sway voters away from the AK Party and ultimately for them to lose the elections.

For these reasons, it had been crucial for Turkey’s strong leadership to continue in order to disappoint the wishes of those who designed a divided Middle East after the elections. The Turkish people gave the perfect answer on June 24. The strong rule in Turkey shows that those who made evil plans for the Middle East will not be able to advance their goals. Turkey making strong alliances with Russia and China in addition to her new eastern alliances, will further reinforce this effect.

The said project already failed in Turkey on July 15. Now Turkey, and as a matter of fact, the entire Middle East are stronger. The Cumhur Alliance that is in power in Turkey at the moment, is fully aware of the dangers Turkey faces and shapes its policies accordingly. AK Party-MHP alliance will continue to contribute to Turkey in the future. MHP has a huge vote potential especially among the Turkish youth. Once the threat of the PKK is thwarted, the people’s trust in AK Party and MHP will increase even more.

The election results gave another important message. They showed that AK Party still couldn't win the hearts of people in coastal cities and North-west Turkey. It is clear that AK Party should assess the reasons behind the strong reaction against it in those regions and understand the concerns of the people. The people in coastal cities are still worried that their freedoms and modernism, and that these might be restricted. This is probably the most important issue the government needs to work on. 

AK Party has completed very successful development projects and Turkey saw truly enormous leaps over the last 15 years. Once these achievements are supported with further leaps in the arts, quality and modernism, people will feel more at ease and content.

Indeed President Erdogan expressed the importance of this point in his post-election speech and said: ‘We will never allow anyone to be discriminated against, frowned upon or isolated because of their ethnicity, faith, clothing choice, life style or any other difference.’  When Turkey makes good on this promise, crucial changes will take place in Turkey.

It should be remembered that a healthy country is possible only when the leadership is strong, and when women and young people are completely free and are contributing members of the society. Women’s rights, one of the biggest targets of extremism, should be of focused on in order to champion and ensure equality both in social life and politics. We hope that this will be an era of beautiful developments for Turkey and the Middle East.

Adnan Oktar's piece in The Jakarta Post (Indonesia):

http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2018/07/04/turkey-s-choice-strong-country-leadership.html