IT HAS been a U-turn to make a stunt driver proud. For the past couple of years, Devlet Bahceli, the head of the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), the fourth-largest in parliament, had been considered one of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s most vicious critics. Mr Erdogan’s plan to replace the country’s parliamentary system with an executive presidency, he once warned, was a recipe for a “sultanate without a throne” and a system with “no balances, no checks, and no brakes”. Mr Bahceli opposed the constitutional overhaul as recently as October.
Today, the raspy-voiced nationalist is suddenly rolling out the red carpet for Mr Erdogan’s pet project. As The Economist went to press, Turkey’s parliament was poised to adopt a package of 18 amendments that would place all executive power in Mr Erdogan’s hands. In the first round of voting, concluded on January 15th, each of the amendments passed with a majority of at least 330 votes. Of these, no more than 316 came from the ruling Justice and Development (AK) party. Mr Bahceli and his whips, undeterred by a mutiny that has been swelling inside their party for months,...Continue reading
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