And all this time I thought that Turkey's system was more similar to Russia, with the Prime Minister and the President having equal power or the president having more power than the PM. (interpret as maybe sarcasm if that was a joke insult on the part of the Dutch).
That's the whole point of our minister's snide remark / insult.
Constitutionally, the function of Turkish president is a strictly ceremonial one. You know, cutting ribbons and giving new year's speeches and such. But ever since he couldn't become prime minister anymore (maximum term reached), and became president instead, Erdogan has been publicly striving to rewrite the constitution, to give the presidential function much more authority, and acting like the constitution has already been changed.
Our minister of foreign affairs is well aware of this, and that's why he kindly reminds Erdogan that his function is only ceremonial.
We don't need comedians to insult the Turkish president, our minister of foreign affairs is more than capable there.
In related news:
Turkish prime minister Davutoglu has said in a speech to his own AK party in parliament, that the new constitution will be secular.
The chairman of parliament, also AK party, who said yesterday that the new constitution should be islamic, has also toned down a bit, saying that "it was just my personal vision, and freedom of religion is still very important to me".
The current Turkish constitution is neutral about religion. This is to be credited to Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, who turned Turkey into a republic, and scrapped sharia from the constitution in 1923. Since then, there's been a strict division of faith and state.
But ever since Erdogan's AK party came into power, Turkey is slowly becoming less secular again. For example, the ban on wearing head scarfs in public functions has been revoked, and it becoming harder and harder to buy alcohol.
The AK party has been expressing the desire to alter the constitution, which has been instated by the military regime that came to power through a coup d'état in 1980, for a while now. Erdogan wants to shift more power and competencies to the president's office.
The AK party has 317 out of 550 seats in parliament, but needs 330 votes to be allowed to hold a referendum about changing the constitution. For that'd theyd need to secure 13 votes from the opposition, which yet seems unlikely to happen.
http://www.volkskrant.nl/buitenland/turkse-premier-nieuwe-grondwet-zal-seculier-zijn~a4290452/linguistical question for anyone here speaking Turkish: does the word ending -oglu mean 'son of', just like we have -son -sen, and slavic languages have -vic?
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Topic: The friendly and polite Europe related terrible jokes thread (Read 1008917 times)