Turkish Supreme Court Rules Presidential Vote Invalid
More from Turkey:
Top court ruled the first round of presidential elections invalid on Tuesday, raising the possibility of early national elections. The government said another round of presidential polls would be held in parliament on Wednesday.
The Constitutional Court upheld an appeal from the secularist opposition that wants to stop the ruling Islamist-rooted AK Party’s candidate, Foreign Minister Abdullah Gül, becoming head of state. A decision was taken to stop the process, Haşim Kılıç, deputy head of the top court, told a news conference.
The Constitutional Court ruled 367 members of parliament had to be present during voting for it to be valid. A total of 361 deputies voted in last Friday’s ballot, 357 of them for Gül, the sole candidate. The court ruling was binding.
All this stress is not good for Turkey’s economy:
Turkish financial markets recorded their biggest falls in a year on Monday and the currency lost more ground on Tuesday. The lira recovered some ground on the news late in trade.
Economy Minister Ali Babacan said the economy was ready for early elections, a comment seen as an attempt to calm markets.
An important victory for Mustafa Kemal Ataturk’s party (CHP) nonetheless. The CHP will use the same tactic time and time again until general elections will be necessary. General elections might result in quite a different Parliament: if the CHP wins (overwhelmingly) Gül will definitely not become Turkey’s next President.
Will it work? Who knows, but it beats a military coup.
We will see what happens now. To say that it are exciting times for Turkey would be quite an understatement.
The question is, would the election of Gul really be a threat to secular Turkey, or would it demonstrate that Turkey has a mature electorate where the religious and secular communities are engaged in the government.
65% of the Turkish parliament voted for this guy. That means the overwhelming majority of elected Turkish politicians don’t see him as a threat.
If that’s a true reflection of popular opinion, you have to ask whether Turkey’s army is throttling the best hope for a beacon of democracy for Muslims in the Middle East. The example that the neoconservatives had promised to create in Iraq.
MikeF: if there will be early elections, your questions will be answered I guess. As I understand it, the majority of the Turkish people opposes Gül, which is why the CHP is not backing down.
Also: you have to understand that many of those who vote for Erdogan simply believe that Erdogan and Gül et al. will not be able to touch Turkey’s secular system: they vote for economical reasons: Erdogan has done great things for Turkey’s economy.
It is not as simple as some seem to think.
But that’s exactly what we want in a democracy.
It’s the same situation we have in the U.S. Most of us feel perfectly comfortable electing secularists, devout Catholics, or evangelical Christians, and Mitt Romney’s Mormonism isn’t considered a big deal, because we don’t believe they’ll try to establish a theocracy.
It only becomes a problem when they actually try to establish “Biblical law” like judge Roy Moore did.
Like the one trying to make adultery illegal and punishable by law?
Yes, like that one.
You may not realize that Christian Right groups in the U.S. have occasionally pushed for anti-adultery legislation, not to mention penalties for sex between unmarried couples. Typically this happens at the state and local level, but members of congress have voiced support for federal laws as well.
These bills often start as anti-gay legislation, but the text is written more broadly and unmarried heterosexuals discover they’ve been caught as well.