ANKARA – Turkey will hold snap presidential and parliamentary elections on 24 June, brought forward by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan from November 2019.
He has run Turkey since 2002 and will seek five more years with beefed up powers approved in a referendum last year.
The idea of an early poll was initially proposed by nationalist allies. The elections had previously been slated for November 2019.
Erdogan said in televised speech the country needed the new election to rid it of “the diseases of the old system”.
“Developments in Syria and elsewhere have made it urgent to switch to the new executive system in order to take steps for our country’s future in a stronger way.”
https://en.dailypakistan.com.pk/world/un-launches-new-plan-for-syrian-refugees-in-turkey/
“Be it the cross-border operations in Syria, or incidents of historic importance centred in Syria and Iraq, they have made it imperative for Turkey to overcome uncertainties quickly,” Erdogan said.
Ankara has labelled the Syrian Kurdish fighters “terrorists”, saying they are affiliated with an outlawed Kurdish group fighting inside Turkey.
With the upcoming election, Turkey will switch from a parliamentary system to a presidential one that will increase the powers of the president.
The system was changed in an April 2017 referendum that was narrowly won by the government’s “yes” camp.
The constitutional changes passed in the vote give the next president new powers to appoint vice presidents, ministers, high-level officials and senior judges. They also allow the president to dissolve parliament, issue executive decrees and impose states of emergency.
Turkey’s lira currency firmed slightly against the dollar, and was at 4.0602 at 1314 GMT. The yield on Turkey’s benchmark bond fell some 10 basis points.
