Turkey: opposition challenges legality of Erdoğan's presidential candidacy

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan arrives at a meeting with the New Welfare Party, an Islamist party, in Ankara on March 28, 2023. AP - Burhan Ozbilici

Text by: RFI Follow

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Less than seven weeks before the presidential and parliamentary elections on May 14 in Turkey, the High Electoral Council published on Tuesday the provisional list of four candidates authorized to run, including current President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. But the opposition is challenging the legality of his candidacy, saying that the head of state is completing his second term, the limit according to the Constitution. A petition has been filed with the authorities with very little chance of success.

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With our correspondent in Istanbul, Anne Andlauer

Since 2007, the Turkish Constitution provides that the Head of State is elected by universal suffrage and that the same person can only be elected twice.

But Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, president since 2014 after having been prime minister for 11 years, is completing his second term. He should therefore not be able to stand again, according to the opposition, including at least seven parties who have filed a request with the High Electoral Council to cancel the candidacy of the outgoing president.

The government, for its part, maintains that a constitutional revision adopted in 2017 introduced a new political regime: a presidential system, and no longer a parliamentary one. Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has served only one term under this new regime, and his first term - between 2014 and 2018 - should therefore not enter into the calculation.

Many constitutionalists and even a former president of the High Electoral Council agree with the opposition. But there is almost no chance that this institution, which has taken controversial decisions in recent years favorable to the government, will prove him right. The final list of candidates will be published on Friday.

► Read also: Kemal Kiliçdaroglu, the "Turkish Gandhi" against Erdogan

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  • Turkey
  • Recep Tayyip Erdogan