Home > 1.5 Direct suffrage > TÜRKIYE - Opinion on the Amendments to the Constituion Adopted by the Grand National Assembly on 21 January 2017 and to be Submitted to a National Referendum on 16 April 2017
 
 
 
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Paragraph 51
 

The current Constitution states that “if the President-elect is a member of a party, his/her relationship with his party shall be severed and his/her membership of the Grand National Assembly of Turkey shall cease” (Article 101). Whereas the latter requirement is maintained under the draft amendments, the former is not. This entails important consequences: the rule that, with one exception (see infra), presidential and parliamentary elections must take place simultaneously, and the removal of the prohibition on the President being a member of a political party, makes it probable that one party will dominate the executive and also have a majority or at least a very significant representation in the legislature. The President is likely to be and stay the leader of that party. Moreover, the danger of an overly close relationship between the executive and legislature is increased because the President is vested with the power to call the elections in the first place.