PM’s calculations may get ruffled

It is apparent Republican People’s Party (CHP) leader Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu and Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) leader Devlet Bahçeli have agreed on a joint candidate.

With Kılıçdaroğlu’s nomination of Ekmeleddin İhsanoğlu and Bahçeli’s acceptance of this suggestion and saying the MHP would accept this candidate, a new phase has started in the presidential elections.
From the beginning, I was thinking a “common candidate” was not a good idea and I had written that.
My suggestion was each political party participate in the first round of the presidential elections with names that would not bother people from other political views and one that would not be difficult to adopt. Then, they would form an alliance for the second round on the candidate who received the highest vote.

We have now passed that phase.

We have differences from the point of political thinking with İhsanoğlu, but I have no objection, no word to be said to his intellectual richness, his esteemed scientific identity and his representation abilities.
Now, the whole matter is about whether or not the organizations of the two political parties, together or separately, would genuinely and devotedly work for this joint candidate.

This is an issue on how much the party chairs and executives have control of their organizations. We will see whether this joint campaign will be conducted effectively once the election process begins.
It is obvious, unless there is a big surprise, the ruling Justice and Development Party’s (AKP) candidate will be Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.

Will the prime minister suffer from the policy of consolidating his supporter masses by...