Turkey's Erdogan declares elections will be held early, under state of emergency

Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said Wednesday that presidential and parliamentary electionswill be brought forward to June 24, more than a year earlierthan planned, saying the country urgently needed to make the switch to an executive presidency.

Bringing the elections forward means that they will takeplace under a state of emergency that has been in place since aJuly 2016 attempted coup and was extended by parliament onWednesday for another three months.

In 15 years of rule as prime minister and later president,Erdogan has transformed a poor country at the eastern edge of Europe into a major emerging market. Yet Turkey's rapid economicgrowth has also come with increased authoritarianism, as Erdoganhas accelerated a crackdown on dissent since the failed coup.

Erdogan and his ministers had previously dismissed theprospect of early polls. Last year, he narrowly won a referendumto change the constitution and create an executive presidency,which will come into effect with the next presidential vote.

He said Turkey's military operations in neighbouring Syria"and the developments in our region of historic importance, havemade it mandatory to remove the election issue from our agenda."

In a speech broadcast live on television, he said it was also"urgent to switch to the new executive system in order to takesteps for our country's future in a stronger way ... We came tothe agreement that we should approach this early electionpositively."

He said he made the decision after speaking to the head ofthe nationalist MHP party, Devlet Bahceli, who a day earlier hadfloated the prospect of an early election. The elections hadbeen slated for November 2019.

Bahceli's small MHP party is expected to form an alliancewith Erdogan's ruling AK Party in the parliamentary election.

'Emergency rule'

The main opposition CHP party called for an immediate end tothe emergency, which allows Erdogan and the government to bypassparliament in passing new laws and allows them to suspend rightsand freedoms.

"There cannot be an election under emergency rule," CHPspokespersonBulent Tezcan said. "The country needs to be brought outof the emergency rule regime starting today."

The United Nations last month called for an end to theemergency and accused Ankara of mass arrests, arbitrary firings and other abuses. Some 160,000 people have been detained and asimilar number of civil servants dismissed since the failedputsch, it said.

Media outlets have been shut down and scores of journalistshave also been jailed.

Parliament last month passed a law revamping electoralregulations that the opposition has said could open the door to fraud and jeopardize the fairness of voting. The law grants theHigh Electoral Board the authority to merge electoral districtsand move ballot boxes to other districts.

The European Union, which Turkey seeks to join, says Turkey is backsliding on bringing its laws into line with EU standards and has called for the country to lift its state of emergency.

Last month, a UNreport concluded that Turkey's state of emergency had led to human rights violations, including arbitrary detentions and dismissals, torture and ill-treatment.