Turkey - Can capital punishment pave Erdoğan’s road to the presidency?

Turkey - Can capital punishment pave Erdoğan’s road to the presidency?(HD).Actually, there have been rumors of a political scenario whispered in Ankara since the spring months about a constitution for a powerful presidential system forced to a referendum with a promise of bringing back the death penalty, but these rumors were never confirmed by ruling Justice and Development Party (AK Parti) officials. That was the reason why the issue never came onto the political agenda, or onto the agenda of the media. However, when Prime Minister Tayyip Erdoğan brought the subject up in a fairly bold manner in an AK Parti convention on Nov. 3, it was not possible to ignore it anymore.
He surfed onto this critical subject while he was criticizing the ongoing hunger strikes over the prison conditions of the imprisoned-for-life leader of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), saying that the majority of Turkish people were in favor of bringing back the death penalty.
This was in reference to the fact that capital punishment in Turkey was lifted by Parliament in 2002, three years after the capture and sentencing to death of Öcalan in 1999. Erdoğan repeated his words on Nov. 10, on his way back from a visit to Indonesia and Brunei. He even dragged them out further by saying that the death penalty existed in countries like the United States, Russia, China and Japan. 
He also gave the example of the 21 years’ sentence for Anders Breivik, the killer of 77 civilians in Norway, asking whether that was a fair judgment. He was clearly aiming to keep the subject warm in public attention. During a recent party retreat he told AKP members that opinion polls indicated overwhelming support for capital punishment. He was not referring to demands for the death sentence every time a young girl is killed in an “honor killing,” or when deadly violence is meted out against women by men in this country. 
With the government’s failure to solve the Kurdish question, and the related increase in PKK terrorism, the question of whether Öcalan’s death sentence should be carried out is what is driving Erdoğan’s populist quest today.
Hopes are fading for a reconciliatory new constitution. Can Erdoğan use the death penalty card to enforce a strong-President system in a possible referendum in Turkey? Why not? Will that decrease the quality of democracy in Turkey, considering the EU’s Copenhagen Criteria? Yes, but the number one problem now for Turkey is the PKK issue. What will the EU say? Will it cut ties? Does the EU look likely to accept Turkey nowadays anyway? Perhaps that could be a bargaining chip in the reset Turkey-EU relations after a period of dealing with the Kurdish and the PKK problems with the sword of Alexander in hand. The hunger strikes in Turkey, risking the lives of hundreds of prisoners for Öcalan, seem to open up Pandora’s Box.Hmmmmm........Erdogan.....Obama's BFF.Read the full story here.