2019 is not that far...

Turkey entered a new reality as of yesterday with President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan putting aside the principle of impartiality and joining the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) under the terms of the recently amended constitution. With the current plans, on May 21 he will also become the chairman of the ruling party. It will take some time to move full fledge and de jure to the presidential governance he has been aspiring for, but definitely as of yesterday, Erdoğan de facto became the super president of the country. The ruling party is under his firm command, the already subservient cabinet has become a team of presidential secretaries, the judiciary has now come directly under his discretion; academia, business world and almost the entire media have all been domesticated sufficient enough to accept the president as an almighty authority.

Lofty remarks were delivered at parliamentary group meetings of the bigger and smaller partners of the coalition between the AKP and the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), while talks started to spread in Ankara that there would soon be a cabinet reshuffle and the MHP would be given four ministerial positions. MHP leader Devlet Bahçeli flatly refused such rumors but left the door of a probable participation of the MHP in the new cabinet open. Can such a development prevent or postpone the MHP to vanish from the political spectrum? With most of its views represented today through the AKP, and the remaining nationalism better off represented by the main opposition Republican People's Party (CHP), can it be assumed that the raison d'être of the MHP vanished? Even if the MHP survives these devastating times, it might be assumed that in a Turkey, with a presidential governance that will force the electorate walk a two...