Turkey's new government wins confidence vote, Kurds boycott

Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan's government won a confidence vote on Wednesday to push ahead with plans for a new constitution, but a parliament boycott by Kurdish lawmakers has soured his calls for cross-party consensus. Erdogan's AK Party won a third consecutive term in a June 12 election with 50 percent of the vote, short of the two-thirds majority he needed to change the constitution at will.
He has since pledged to work with the opposition to draft a new charter to replace one drafted after a military coup in 1980. The issue of greater rights for Turkey's minority Kurds is likely to dominate the debate on a new constitution, but deputies from the main pro-Kurdish party have boycotted parliament in protest at court rulings that barred some of its jailed elected candidates from taking their seats.
Analysts say drafting a new charter without input from the Peace and Democracy Party (BDP), the largest party representing the Kurds, would undermine efforts to end a 27-year conflict with Kurdish rebels that has cost more than 40,000 lives. Turkey's main opposition party, the Republican People's Party (CHP), which won 135 seats, ended its boycott of parliament this week after reaching an agreement with AK on two elected CHP candidates who have also been barred for being in jail. The agreement called for joint legal efforts to allow the jailed MPs a way of taking their oaths.
AK Party officials have tried to convince BDP officials to end the deadlock and take their oath before parliament reconvenes on October 1, after the summer recess. While Erdogan has said reforming the constitution is his number one goal, markets hope the government will prioritise the need to cool an economy that surged 11 percent in the first quarter of 2011, and could rack up a current account deficit of up to 10 percent of GDP this year.
Erdogan's has retained Finance Minister Mehmet Simsek to manage the economy and has created a new ministry to press Ankara's flagging EU membership bid. Under Erdogan, Turkey has been transformed from serial basket case to one of the world's fastest growing economies, but there are worries that it could be set for a hard landing unless the new government tightens fiscal and monetary policy fast. Erdogan's new government received 322 votes in the confidence vote in the 550-seat parliament, a routine procedure at the start of every new parliament.