15 March 2017•Update: 16 March 2017
By Fatih Hafiz Mehmet
ANKARA
Turkey’s proposed new presidential system would protect the legislature and executive’s separate spheres, said political scientist Haluk Alkan about the package of constitutional changes, which faces a referendum on April 16.
"The presidential system proposal is written with an understanding which protects the superiority of the legislative power, and aims for a powerful executive power in its own sphere," Alkan, a professor of political science at Istanbul University, told Star daily in an interview published Monday.
Alkan said that under the new system, if the parliament wants to overcome the president's veto, a simple majority vote is enough.
"But in order to do this in the U.S., a two-thirds majority of both houses of Congress is needed," he explained.
Alkan said the president will only be able to issue decrees in six areas: Appointing ministers and top executives of public institutions, founding a ministry, founding a public institution, the secretariat-general of the National Security Council, the State Supervisory Council, and the Turkish Armed Forces General Staff.
According to Alkan, all of these are related to institutions and officials within the executive sphere. Alkan said the presidential system proposal also lays down the limits of presidential decrees in the legislative sphere.
"For example, no presidential decree dealing with rights and freedoms would be possible. That is to say, decrees like U.S. President Donald Trump's limiting the freedom of travel would not be possible here," he stressed.
Alkan also said the proposed new system takes necessary precautions against authoritarianism.
"Firstly, the president's authority is limited to executive power. Secondly, the president can be elected a maximum of two times. A person limited to two elections can’t drag the system towards authoritarianism," Alkan said.
- More accountability to parliament
He said that the president's actions will also be open to checks and regulation by the Constitutional Court and Council of State.
The new system would abolish the president's jurisdiction in the current system to act alone independently from judicial regulation, and would also strengthen the president's accountability to parliament compared to the current system, Alkan added.
The constitutional changes have been discussed since Recep Tayyip Erdogan won his current position in August 2014 -- Turkey’s first popularly elected president.
The reforms would hand wide-ranging executive powers to the president, and the post of prime minister would be abolished. The president would also be allowed to retain ties to a political party.
Other changes would see the minimum age for parliamentary candidates lowered to 18 and the number of deputies rise to 600. Under the new constitution, simultaneous parliamentary and presidential elections for a five-year term would be held in November 2019.
