Hurriyet has published an article by Murat Yetkin headlined 'Catch 66 for Erdoğan.' "Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdoğan said on January 30 that if the Parliamentary Reconciliation Commission could not complete its works for a new Constitution for Turkey by the end of March, then the ruling Justice and Development Party (AK Parti) would bring its own draft to the parliamentary vote and try to take it to a referendum "if it gathers enough power," the article begins. "That is not only a clear and ambitious target but also a very critical condition on how to realize it."
"Erdoğan really needs a new constitution especially for two strategic reasons. One is a new administrative system giving additional powers to president; another signe that he wants to get elected as president in August 2014 two-phase presidential election. The second is the Kurdish problem," the author writes."The constitutional work, now with Erdoğan’s deadline by the end of March, has a catch 22; let us call it catch 66 for our purposes: It is the Article 66 of the current constitution which defines a Turk and Turkish citizenship. The BDP does not want the citizenship to be defined on Turkishness. On the other hand other parties, including a part, especially from Western and Central Anatolian provinces of the AK Parti say the word ‘Turk’ does not have an ethnic meaning but a political-cultural one. It is complicated, but it is such a problem that it already started to shake the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) causing the rsignation of a Kurdish origin deputy after a row with another CHP member over ethnic equality and citizenship," the article reads. "Erdoğan has this ‘Catch 66’ and in order to oıvercome it, he might try to change the rules, even if needs to play around the parliamentary arithmatics."
