President & Prime Minister
The president, elected by the TGNA from among its members, serves for one seven year term and is supposed to be `above politics', and symbolise the nation. He or she is the head of state, with important executive powers and responsibilities. The true head of government, who decides its policies and directions, is the prime minister. However, recent presidents (Ozal and Demirel) have informally expanded the powers of the presidential office and have been accused at times of having used the office with partisan effect. The prime minister is appointed by the president to form a government, and thus is almost always the head of the majority party, or of a likely coalition. The judiciary, though theoretically independent, has in many instances been influenced by currentgovernment policies.
Political Parties
Though the Turks are firm believers in democracy, the tradition of popular rule and responsibility is relatively short. Real multiparty democracy came into being only after WWII (compared to England's tradition of almost 800 years). Turkish democracy has had its ups and downs.
Mid-Century Atatek's Republican People's Party (CHP) enjoyed one-party rule until after WWII, when multi-party democracy became a reality. In the first elections the CHP lost out to the right-wing Democratic Party (DP), which attempted to control the government as closely as the CHP had before the war by grabbing extra-constitutional power. The Turkish armed forces, entrusted by Atatek's legacy as guarantors of the Turkish constitution, intervened. After the military intervention of 1960, the Democratic Party was banned, but its party faithful simply formed a successor, the similarly centre-right Justice Party (AP), and did as well in the elections against the centreleft CHP.
No comments:
Post a Comment