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TURKEY'S POLITICAL SCENE POST-ELECTION (PART 1): THE AKP-CHP OPTION
PolicyWatch 2442
June 22, 2015
By Soner Cagaptay
Soner Cagaptay is the Beyer Family Fellow and director of the Turkish Research Program at The Washington Institute, and author of "The Rise of Turkey: The Twenty-First Century's First Muslim Power" (http://washin.st/ZI45JV)
A governing alliance bringing together the country's two largest parties could end an era of polarization, but would not be free of challenges.
On June 10, Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan met with Deniz Baykal, former chair of the country's main opposition, leftist Republican People's Party (CHP), to discuss Turkish politics in the aftermath of the June 7 elections, in which Erdogan's Justice and Development Party (AKP) lost its thirteen-year legislative majority.
Turkish analysts report that, during the meeting, Erdogan and Baykal discussed a potential AKP-CHP coalition government. Indeed, many other coalition options are now being discussed in Ankara, including one between the AKP and similarly right-wing Nationalist Action Party (MHP), an apparently more plausible option (the MHP scenario will be discussed in Part 2 of this PolicyWatch, to appear next week; Part 3 will discuss scenarios involving the pro-Kurdish Peoples' Democratic Party, or HDP). But the AKP-CHP option deserves analysis as an intriguing case because it would bring the country's two largest parties together, potentially ending a protracted era of political polarization, as well as align Turkey's Syria policy closer with that of the United States. Here are some possible developments under this unusual partnership.
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