Will The Elections Be Held?

MILLIYET- Columnist Taha Akyol comments on the initiatives to postpone the elections in Turkey. A summary of his column is as follows:
With dire public opinion polls hanging over its head, the Democratic Left Party (DSP) is worried about the upcoming elections. I recently met with former Justice Minister Hikmet Sami Turk. He is the DSP’s Trabzon candidate, but he still wants the elections to be held on Nov. 3. He’s an example of a politician held in high esteem who acts for the country’s best interests and in line with political ethics, principles and law, not out of concern for being elected or for his party. ‘If the elections are postponed, the country will be plunged into a maelstrom of instability,’ he told me. The current government is an elections government and if the elections are postponed, a new government would be necessary. But this would be hard to do because the fragmentation of Parliament has increased. Then the country would be without a government during this critical period.’
Parliament Speaker Omer Izgi is a jurist as well, one held high in public opinion. What will he do? Will he say, ‘The proposal to postpone elections wasn’t made in good will, and I won’t process it,’ as former Parliament Speaker Necmettin Karaduman did? Izgi told me yesterday that parties favoring postponement of elections had called the Advisory Council to convene, which he called a ‘goodwill initiative.’ Thus, the Karaduman example doesn’t hold under the current circumstances. There are also certain parties in the Advisory Council which don’t favor holding the elections as scheduled. Cleary there won’t be a consensus and the ‘ordinary process’ will be carried out. The Parliament speaker will give priority to ‘issues carrying over from the last session,’ and the proposal to postpone elections will be brought to the Constitutional Commission, etc. To sum up, Mr. Izgi said, ‘Under the procedural rules, a great many matters are still waiting to be dealt with. Therefore I don’t think that there will be enough time to deal with the postponement proposal. I think the elections will be held on Nov. 3.’ Is that clear enough?
As it’s too late to postpone the elections, does playing out these useless, divisive initiative before the public have any meaning or purpose? At this point I consider Mr. Turk’s approach a very good example. Although his party has a very serious problem with the threshold, he is against postponing elections, saying, ‘The country would be harmed, and it would go against the spirit of the Constitution’s Article 78.’ Mr. Turk’s opinions and actions can be criticized, but certainly he always acts using his legal judgment, and he is against politicizing that judgment. Even if he loses his seat due to his party, his esteem and respectability will remain intact. However, can one say the same of the ‘disgruntled deputies’? Those people and parties fearful of losing their positions in Parliament won’t win over public opinion by scraping and scrounging for three or four months in their seats, but will instead make things worse for themselves. However, essentially politics is a matter of respect. Postponing the elections will harm not only Turkey’s esteem, but also the esteem of those who push through the postponement.

SOURCE: OFFICE OF THE PRIME MINISTER, DIRECTORATE GENERAL OF PRESS AND INFORMATION