ANKARA
Every effort to form a coalition government was made before calling a rerun of June’s general election, Turkey’s president said Wednesday.
Addressing mukhtars -- locally elected village and neighborhood leaders -- at the presidential palace in Ankara, Recep Tayyip Erdogan said he was obliged to call an election.
“It is a constitutional authorization and obligation,” he said. “All efforts were made. The prime minister… met all the political parties and had the necessary talks with them.”
Turkey is to hold another general election on Nov. 1 after coalition talks between the Justice and Development (AK) Party and opposition parties failed.
In an apparent reference to his decision not to offer the Republican People’s Party (CHP), which came second in June’s election, the chance to hold coalition talks, Erdogan said: “I did not need to give a new assignment as the statements of the political parties and the heads of the parties did not make it possible to form a new coalition government.”
Erdogan described Turkey’s current situation as critical, with instability and conflict surrounding the country and renewed violence in the south and east as the Kurdish conflict reignites.
He went on to condemn foreign media for portraying terrorism in Turkey as “blameless” and “terrorists as flower children”.
The Turkish Foreign Ministry recently criticized the BBC for broadcasting footage of a Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) camp in northern Iraq.
The group -- designated a terror organization by Turkey, the EU and U.S. -- has fought a 30-year separatist insurgency against the Turkish state. The renewal of the conflict towards the end of June has seen more than 800 killed.
