The Good Party is the target of 24 June

As expected, Bahçeli’s initiative has borne fruit: Turkey is embarking on an early, indeed, hasty election. Despite claims to the contrary, with the election forever hot on the agenda, a “snap election” was also on the cards, but a snap event of this nature that turned into a feat of political engineering whose concealment was scarcely felt to be necessary had not occurred to anybody. Given that the date of 24 June has now been unofficially announced, let us examine from various aspects the demands posed by this haste and the consequences it will entail:

The ruling party wants to turn its own predicament into hopelessness for the opposition: The palpable regression in the economy, foreign policy and critical service areas such as education and health was proving irreversible and there was no halting the impact of this malaise on electoral support. Time was clearly not on their side and fillips such as Afrin and the incentive package appeared incapable of doing much good. On the other hand, in the aftermath of the “people’s alliance” there appeared a slow but decisive consolidation on the opposition. The ruling party has concluded that the next possible convergence of these two mutually diagonal trends will be to its greater advantage.

The drastic bringing forward of the election points to the negative nature both of the indicators of malaise and electoral change over time. Moreover, the choice of a date that clearly aims to exclude the Good Party, which has the potential to mount considerable opposition, from the election shows that the reaction such a move will engender has been deemed worth risking. The reason such a reaction is deemed worthy of risk may either be out of reliance on the lack of reaction that followed the 16 April referendum or bear witness to the degree of concern felt over the ensuing result. But such a blindingly blatant move will also have unexpected consequences.

The bringing forward of the election to this extent will greatly constrain the opposition from setting a joint goal and explaining the whys and wherefores of this goal. The opposition, which has been unable to establish the principles for acting together and the basis for unity is more disadvantaged as opposed to 16 April, which had the easily explicable goal of maintaining the prevailing situation. For, in order to set out a restoration programme, it must lay claim to arithmetic that will produce a majority in parliament and set out the stages of the restoration. With the issue of the isolation of the HDP not having been solved, the ruling party is constraining the opposition by removing the Good Party from the equation, too.

Meral Akşener gave the first reaction from the Good Party. Akşener said she could, if need be, stand as a candidate by gathering 100,000 independent signatures. From the point of view of the Good Party, which has built its entire strategy on Akşener’s candidacy in the second round of the presidential election, this formula may not suffice to overcome the difficulties, because, for a political movement that will be undergoing its first political test, this may be tantamount to stillbirth. A result that impairs the Good Party’s performance in the parliamentary elections may create a serious problem in terms of the opposition’s overall clout. For sure, the options are on the table of the Felicity Party, which is entitled to contest the election, being a “dummy party” or the CHP an “umbrella party.”

The ruling party, which has paved the way for even last-minute changes made to the electoral laws to be applicable in this election, appears likely to be inclined to use the various cards it is still holding to block the opposition’s room for manoeuvre and rob it of time. Past performance testifies that gentlemanly conduct will not be engaged in on such matters. However, the act of accepting the result without this election having been held and throwing in the towel before entering the ring may provoke an unexpected reaction.

 http://www.cumhuriyet.com.tr/koseyazisi/960522/24_Haziran_in_hedefi_iyi_Parti.html