Turkish president tightens grip on state

These are unsettling times for Turkey, as the nation steels itself for elections in June that could determine its course for years to come.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the country's president and dominant figure, has struck an increasingly confrontational tone on relations with the west.

"They want us dead, they want to see our children dead," he told an Islamic meeting last year, and claimed last month that outside forces wanted to turn Turkey into a second Andalucia - the Spanish region reconquered by Christians from Muslims in 1492.

Scores of people have been prosecuted for insulting Mr Erdogan since he moved from the prime minister's to the president's office last August - including cartoonists, journalists, students and Mehmet Altunses, a 16-year old boy who was marched to the police station from the classroom.

Meanwhile, the Turkish state's response to apparent leaks that Ankara has armed jihadis in Syria has been to ban reporting of the issue.

A tidal wave of legislation has centralised power. The government has strengthened its hold over the judiciary, while the country's intelligence agency and police have both been given greater powers. Other measures have given ministers the right to block websites before obtaining court orders and Ankara-appointed governors the ability to instruct police to investigate or detain people. This month, Turkey blocked access to Twitter and YouTube for the second time in little more than a year.

Amid all this movement, Mr Erdogan has one big project in mind - to establish an executive presidency that would, in his words, remove "all obstructions" to governing Turkey, allowing the country to be run like a business and supplanting what he scornfully describes as a "many-voiced" parliamentary system.

He argues such a system will help to more than double Turkey's per capita income to $25,000 by 2023 and move the country "beyond the level of contemporary civilisations".

To a certain extent, a de facto presidential system is in place. Parliament recently pushed through a law giving the presidency a secret budget for intelligence, defence, political and other purposes. Despite the current constitution's injunction for the president to sever relations with political parties, Mr Erdogan, the country's first directly elected head of state, maintains great influence over the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP).

He would like the emerging system to be strengthened and formalised, and repeatedly calls for 400 like-minded members of parliament to be elected in the general elections - enough to rewrite the constitution with the executive presidency at its heart.

But despite the president's seemingly unstoppable rise - which has seen him triumph in nine consecutive national votes, roll back restrictions on women wearing the headscarf and recognise more rights for the country's Kurds - the story of Turkey is not necessarily that of his steady accretion of power.

The economy, the bedrock of much of his support, is not performing as well as once it did - growth was 2.9 per cent in 2014 and it appears to have slowed further this year, while consumer confidence is at a six-year low (see Real GDP chart, above).

Most polls ahead of the June 7 election do not forecast a constitution-changing majority. Some suggest that the AKP, while all but certain to remain the largest party, might have to look for a coalition partner.

Unprecedented dissent has also flared within the AKP itself. Ahmet Davutoglu, Mr Erdogan's handpicked successor as prime minister and party leader, has disagreed with him on issues ranging from corruption to the peace process to end the country's Kurdish conflict.

Mr Davutoglu shows every sign of wanting to use the powers given to his office by law.

Other AKP members and supporters express concern privately that their Islamist-rooted movement has become a vehicle for Mr Erdogan and that the president, who recently attacked the central bank for treachery for having kept interest rates relatively high, is becoming unpredictable.

But to date, Mr Davutoglu has been forced by Mr Erdogan to retreat on almost every issue. An anti-corruption transparency initiative and a proposal to tax property windfall gains have both stalled. An effort to enlist the country's intelligence chief as an MP has been abandoned, and the Kurdish peace process has been put on ice.

"Davutoglu has to have some powers; Mr Erdogan has to give him some room to manoeuvre," says an AKP member of parliament. "But if he wants to make his own decision, then immediately the attacks start."

One question is how the political dynamic will shift after the elections, and whether the AKP will win enough MPs to change the constitution to give Mr Erdogan the system he craves.

Another question is whether Mr Davutoglu will emerge empowered, as he shifts from appointed to elected prime minister, or whether the outcome will be altogether messier, as both sides redouble their efforts after a less than resounding victory.

The deciding factor for both questions may be the success or failure of the pro-Kurdish People's Democratic Party, which is breaking with a long tradition by seeking to pass a 10 per cent threshold to enter parliament, rather than running its candidates as independents.

Should the pro-Kurdish party win 10 per cent or more of all MPs, then AKP hopes of gaining the 330 seats necessary to take constitutional changes to a referendum would seem slight. Any chance of the 367 seats to change the constitution outright would be even more remote.

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Meanwhile, the president has to contend with a rise in support for the anti-peace process National Movement party - a phenomenon that, according to several AKP supporters, has led him to redouble his own nationalist rhetoric and essentially put the peace process on pause.

This is the tableau Turkey confronts before the election: a president sometimes seeming to subvert his own government, whether to show the greater efficacy of the presidential system or to attract nationalist votes; economic strains behind the scenes and an increasingly open dispute for power within the AKP.

One senior AKP politician recently confessed "we failed", meaning that the party did not succeed in showing that moderate Islamists could govern democratically.

Whether Mr Erdogan will succeed in his ambitions is another matter.

He advocates a presidential system almost every day and until now has almost always prevailed in his wishes.

But the obstacles he faces if he is to cement his rule - the weaker economy, the electoral maths, dissent within his own party - look to be greater than ever. So too are the stakes.

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