BY YILMAZ OZTUNA
TURKIYE- Political party leaders are pointing harsh fingers at each other from the campaign trail. The spotlight is on three leaders in particular: Prime Minister and ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Deniz Baykal of the main opposition Republican People's Party's (CHP), and the Nationalist Movement Party's (MHP) Devlet Bahceli.
It seems nearly certain that all three parties will all pass the election threshold. Then why are they so busy sniping at each other?
The reason is to attract more votes in this weekend's elections. The vote percentage is as important as the number of deputies taking seats in Parliament because in the fall 2002 elections, the AKP got two-thirds of the seats in Parliament though it got only one-third of the votes.
Among the three leaders, the agenda is set by Erdogan. His two rivals are trying to respond to him. They don't praise a single thing done by the government over the last five years as they fear doing so would lose them votes. What they fear more than losing votes is other parties attracting more votes.
Erdogan, who knows this, set the tone this week by saying that if his party gets a smaller percentage of votes than in 2002, i.e. 34.4%, he would consider quitting politics, and raised the bar by saying that he would quit if his party doesn't come to power alone. Both Baykal and Bahceli criticized these remarks. Maybe they thought it would be impolite not to lash out at Erdogan!
Next month these three distinguished politicians will meet and agree on presidential candidate suitable for Turkey. They will calm down our democracy. I don't think that they will argue or disagree, because holding general elections again so soon would harm the Turkish Republic. Although they're lacking in political experience, Parliament's new deputies won't allow such chaos to cripple our country.