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Turkey's Erdogan announces snap election on Nov. 1

(Xinhua) Updated: 2015-08-21 20:29

ANKARA/ISTANBUL - Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced on Friday that Turkey will hold a snap election on Nov. 1 after coalition talks between the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) and opposition parties failed following the June 7 polls.

"I will take Turkey to election on Nov. 1," he told media after Friday prayer in Istanbul.

"As a president, I know limits of my authority and I have to use it to the end," he added.

Erdogan also indicated that the Supreme Election Committee made all preparations for the early elections.

Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu returned mandate to form government on Tuesday after his coalition talks with opposition parties have failed.

Following a meeting with Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) leader on Monday, Davutoglu said there is no possibility for a coalition government as talks between both CHP and MHP have failed.

The 45-day constitutional deadline will be over on Aug. 23 and Erdogan has the power to announce a renewal of the election on Nov.

1 and the second one in six months.

The June 7 election had caused the ruling AKP to lose its majority in parliament, but it did cause Erdogan to lose control over the political agenda in the country. He favored another election to try his chance once again and the country is going to another one.

Erdogan sees the Kurdish Peoples' Democratic Party's (HDP) entry into parliament by exceeding the 10 percent threshold as the main reason the AKP lost its parliamentary majority, thus spoiling his calculations of exercising extensive executive powers if the country were to shift from a parliamentary model to a strong presidential model through a constitutional change.

East and southeast Turkey are the locations of the HDP's primary voter base. The collapse of the three-year-old dialogue between the government and the PKK, and also the de facto cease-fire, is not likely to boost sympathy towards the AKP in those regions anyway.

However, the composition in the parliament will not change radically in the new election, thus not promising the AKP a government of its own, and ignoring the security situation in the regions of HDP vote concentration.

The popular issue nowadays in the political backstage is whether the AKP would invite the HDP into the interim government, in which the CHP and MHP refused to take part.

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