When the Justice and Development Party (AK Party) came to power in 2002, the tutelage regime consisting of military, judiciary and the main opposition party strived to overthrow the AK party with the closure cases filed against it, the issue of 367 members and the e-memorandum. Afterwards, they resorted to street protests such as the Gezi Park uprising and the October 6-7 incidents in order to achieve their goal. Ultimately, it was ruled that the government could be toppled through conventional methods and the July 15 coup attempt was organized. This insurrection, attempted by a group of Gulenist Terror Group (FETO) affiliated military officers who infiltrated the military, was repelled by the Turkish people.

Meanwhile, the government was endeavoring to break the taboos and barriers impeding societal peace, which were introduced by the tutelage system and the 1924, 1961 and 1982 constitutions. The government changed some of the obsolete laws that were copied from various European countries during the 1930s and aligned these laws with the EU. The 1915 Armenian incidents were confronted in every aspect as President Recep Tayyip Erdogan asked historians to establish an international committee on the subject.

For the first time in Turkey’s Republican history, a president sent his condolences to the families of the Armenians who lost their lives in 1915. In 2005, he said the following words in the southeastern province Diyarbakir: “Every country has made mistakes throughout its history. For great countries, ignoring past mistakes is not appropriate. The Kurdish question is not only the problem of a certain segment of the country, but the problem of the entire nation, including me.” He exerted efforts for the reconciliation process, which was the largest project undertaken in Turkey to introduce peace in society.

However, Turkey’s interlocutors during the process did not only consist of the other party of the conflict. The country had to address many countries, including superpowers and smaller states. Erdogan also abolished the headscarf ban in the public sphere, which had debarred many women from receiving university education or taking up a career for years. He also marked unprecedented achievements in public works and launched new transportation means across the country. Effective metro routes were built in metropolitan cities. He took great steps in the defense industry, made the country prosper whereas people enjoyed higher purchasing powers thanks to his efforts. Along with all these steps, he opened the country’s doors to three and a half million Syrians who fled the war.

In a nutshell, the government ruled out a great deal of national and global attacks by taking a reasonable degree of security measures. If any country were to experience only one tenth of what Turkey has undergone over the past years, it would also take the measures Turkey has taken. In the face of all these threats, a state of emergency was declared. Of course, a country who has to focus on her security will face some volatilities in democracy and freedoms. This situation is also valid for Turkey. But this is only a normal and temporary symptom.

A month ago, an expression remarked by the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) Chairman Kemal Kilicdaroglu was captioned by the daily newspaper Cumhuriyet: “We will unseat Erdogan through elections.” This is a curious statement since the CHP leader seems to have implicitly admitted all the operations to overthrow Erdogan. The CHP does not aim to take over the presidential seat or become the ruling power. The party firstly suggested presenting former President Abdullah Gul as the joint presidential candidate of the opposition to run against Erdogan. Then they tried to convince Meral Aksener to run as a joint candidate. However, being an ambitious politician and aspiring to be a leader, Aksener gave a negative answer although Kilicdaroglu transferred 15 CHP deputies to Aksener’s newly-formed Iyi Party (Good Party). Eventually, the opposition parties agreed that each party will nominate a candidate to run for president, whereas the CHP, Iyi Party, Felicity Party (SP) and Democrat Party (DP) decided to form an alliance for the parliamentary election by excluding the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP).

These four parties have stressed that they have agreed to work towards unseating Erdogan and returning to the parliamentary system. In this country, the parliamentary system equals to a system in which politics is determined by the tutelage system, where the governments are volatile and elections are overruled through external ways – as past experiences have shown. However, it is not easy to bring up the matter frankly before the electorate. The alliance announced that it would declare its protocol last Thursday. Then, it was stated that the protocol was not yet ready and the event was postponed to Saturday. In another announcement made on Saturday, it was said that the event could not be organized as the agendas of the party leaders did not cohere.

Will they say “We do not have any mutually-agreed program on any subject. We only aim to unseat Erdogan, return to the parliamentary system and call early elections,” in front of the 50 million electorate. Of course, it is not easy for the leaders of the four parties, who share hardly any common features, to promise only chaos.

The initial outcomes of the ongoing negotiations on pre-electoral alliance between the Felicity Party and the Iyi Party was revealed last weak. The vice chairman of the Iyi Party announced that both parties had agreed on forming an alliance on principal and that the Democrat Party will also join this alliance. As stated in the declaration coming from the Iyi Party, the content and method of this alliance is not clearly defined yet. Nonetheless, it is certain that these parties are going to form an alliance in the second run of the presidential elections if no candidate wins a simple majority (50%+1 vote) in the first round. The vice chairman of the Iyi Party rationalized this strategy by giving the example of Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu who was nominated as the candidate for presidency by the CHP and MHP alliance in the 2014 presidential elections. The failure of Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu in that election was taken as a reference point by the Felicity Party and Iyi Party to failure of pre-electoral alliance in the first round. Thus, the first significant strategy for these parties in forming an alliance appeared as the second run-based formulation.

Issues, principles or ideology?

Another striking point of this unripe alliance is the emphasis on ambiguous principals which are not publicly declared. Both parties explained that this alliance is going to be established on principals that both parties agreed on. Nevertheless, the extent and limitations of these principles were not defined. Whether the core of these principles are going to be a set of values or an ideology was not expressed by the parties. On the contrary, the AK Party-MHP alliance introduced the core of their alliance as the value of national unity, which would be open to each party respectful of the country’s national values, unity and solidarity. The AK Party and MHP also emphasized that parties willing to join this alliance had to respect these values. When it comes to the Iyi Party-Felicity Party-Democrat Party alliance, there is still no issue, principle, or value on surface in terms of forming the alliance. Because of this reason, the alliance has been criticized by some circles as being so latent.

In this point, another striking question comes to the forefront: why have these parties accelerated their efforts to form an alliance even when they are not ready yet? Actually, it is obvious that the clear-cut formulation of the AK Party-MHP alliance forced other parties in the system to take their positions about forming an alliance. Even if these parties are not ready to form an alliance in related to the ambiguity of their interests, they took measures to not drop out of the race towards the 2019 elections.

Indeed, it is possible to have a discussion on the issue of ideological proximity between these parties in the following days. It is related to the fact that the ideological proximity between the parties to form an alliance will be effective in determining the components of the alliance and its success or failure. Since there is a mismatch between the ideologies of the Iyi Party-Felicity Party-Democrat Party triumvirate, it will be difficult especially in parliamentary elections for these parties to form alliances and hold their voters. Additionally, the CHP is expected to continue its search for alliance until the elections, which will also determine the boundaries of the Iyi Party-Felicity Party-Democrat Party alliance.

It is obvious that the opposition parties still lack in a consensus on pre-electoral alliances. The problems are mostly related to the problem of ideological distance between aforementioned parties and the fuzziness of their interests in joining an alliance.

In presidential systems, electoral alliances are held in both presidential and parliamentary elections. The presidential authority, which holds executive power, has vital importance for political parties. For this reason, parties – whose primary aim is to obtain this position – tend to form an alliance if they cannot get a majority of the votes. Thus, the concept of majority rule in presidential elections make alliances an obligation for countries governed by a presidential system.

The presence of an organic link between presidential elections and parliamentary elections in presidential systems ensures that alliances formed at one election are carried out at the other. For this reason, the general tendency in countries governed by presidential systems is providing alliance both in the presidential and parliamentary elections. In other words, the scope of alliances in presidential and parliamentary elections is interdependent, and the success achieved in one election seems to influence the results of the other.

Since the main actor in the presidential system is the president, the success of this candidate in elections also determines the success of its party in parliament. Called the coattail effect in political science literature, this implies that the presidential candidate’s popularity and electoral success contributes to the success of their party in parliamentary and local elections. This is the case especially when presidential and legislative elections are held at the same time.If there is a significant time difference between the presidency and legislative elections, this effect decreases. The period between the two elections is also another important determinant in the success of alliances.

Another consequence of the coattail effect in terms of electoral alliances concerns minor parties and their election strategies. If the presidential and legislative elections areheld synchronically, the chances of the presidential candidates of minor parties to win the election are reduced. This is because their candidates cannot create a massive effect on society due to their limited popularity. Therefore, these minor parties have a tendency to form alliances with larger parties in order to obtain significant success in elections.

Another element determinant on pre-electoral alliances in presidential systems is the intrinsic political culture of countries. As an extension of this culture, electoral alliances have changing characteristics. For example, in Mexico, alliances have been more common in the last twenty years due to rising political instability following the end of dominant party rule. In related to the effects of instability of the political system, Brazil has very well framed pre-electoral alliance rules in its Election and Political Party Laws. In South Korea, the effects of long-lasting military regimes and strong leadership factors brought about leadership-based pre-electoral alliances formed with the initiation and mutual confidence of the leaders of the parties. As a semi-presidential system, France has witnessed a clear-cut division among political parties on both sides of the spectrum. Parties on the left and right have formed alliances within themselves.

Last but not least, the balance of power among parties forming a pre-electoral alliance is a crucial element. This balance is shaped by their power as a unique actor. Each party in the alliance can contribute to the election success in accordance with its popularity among the general public. At this point, if a party fails to convince its voters that it has achieved necessary gains from an alliance, the party may be negatively affected. For this reason, political parties pay close attention to their achievements and contributions when forming an alliance and observe whether there is any deviance is the balance of power between the two parties.