Turkish prime minister holds last-ditch coalition talks

ANKARA, Turkey — Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu met on Monday with nationalist party leader Devlet Bahceli in a last-ditch effort to form a coalition alliance before a deadline for establishing a government runs out.

Prospects for a partnership between Davutoglu’s Islamic-rooted party and the Nationalist Movement Party look slim and the premier has already said that new elections appear to be Turkey’s “only option.”

The ruling party lost its majority in elections in June. Coalition talks with Turkey’s pro-secular party collapsed last week.

The nationalist party has set stiff conditions for a partnership while Davutoglu reportedly is seeking a short-lived alliance to govern until early elections.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who founded the ruling party, is also reported to favor new elections in the hopes that the party can win back its majority.

Last week, Davutoglu met with Republican People’s Party (CHP) leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu for a one-and-half hour meeting in Ankara but to no avail.

Davutoglu said at the time that AKP negotiators had offered a “medium-term reform government” to the CHP, but “no common ground has been found.”

New polls will come at a time when Turkey is fighting a cross-border offensive against Islamic State (IS) jihadists in Syria and Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) militants in northern Iraq and risk causing further political and economic uncertainty.

The prospect of early elections unnerved markets, with the Turkish lira losing 1.85 percent in value against the dollar to hit a new record low.

Davutoglu has given no date for early elections, which some observers expect as soon as October or November.

Analysts have suggested Erdogan all along wanted to see a re-run of the election so the AKP could regain an overall majority and realize his dream of creating a presidential system in Turkey.

Kilicdaroglu last week blasted the attitude of the AKP, saying it never showed any interest in forming a long-term and sustainable four-year coalition.

“We never received a coalition offer from the Davutoglu. He gave us only two options: a short-term election government or support for an AKP minority government,” he said at CHP headquarters.

Erdogan has said he did not have the authority to extend an August 23 deadline to reach a coalition deal, but several commentators have cast doubt on this.

The main reason for the AKP’s failure to win an overall majority was the strong performance of the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), which won more than 13 percent of the vote.

Critics have suggested that Erdogan ordered the security operation with the aim of discrediting the HDP by linking it to the outlawed PKK in order to harm its chances in a vote.

The government has denied the claims.

Turkey’s initial airstrikes against IS targets were warmly welcomed by the West but Ankara then triggered concern by concentrating its firepower against PKK rebels in Iraq.