Wait until July 3 for Turkish PM Erdoğan’s call for presidency

Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdoğan is likely to wait until the July 3 deadline to announce his decision on whether to be a candidate for the presidency, the first round of voting for which will be held on Aug. 10.

July 3 is the last day to submit the names of the candidates to the Supreme Election Board (YSK) in order to be eligible for the elections.

On June 22, on his way back from France, Erdoğan told reporters on board his jet that the reason he was waiting until the deadline was that he was “waiting for the opposition parties’ candidates to become official.” So the former justification for not officially announcing Erdoğan’s candidacy to the presidency, which he wants very much, was that there was no name from the opposition as a rival. Now there is an opposition candidate, but Erdoğan says he is still waiting.

The only candidate named - though not yet submitted officially - is Dr. Ekmeleddin İhsanoğlu, the former Secretary General of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC). İhsanoğlu was suggested by the social democratic main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) leader Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu and seconded by Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) leader Devlet Bahçeli.

The Kurdish problem-focused Peoples’ Democracy Party (HDP) signaled during its congress in Ankara on June 22 that it was intending to put forward its own candidate for the presidency. According to HDP sources, the most probable name is the party’s co-chairman, Selahattin Demirtaş.

That would be the first piece of bad news for Erdoğan since the İhsanoğlu candidacy. İhsanoğlu has already caught Erdoğan’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AK Parti) a...