I don’t have much time today, so I am just pointing anyone interested in the direction of two newspaper articles on the Turkish president. Both are from the newspaper Hürriyet, which, it should be understood, is not a particularly pro-AKP publication. (The AKP is the president’s party). However, the articles are not overly partisan.

The first report provides an overview of President Abdullah Gül actions in office since his election in 2007. It points out that President Gül has not acted as an ‘executive leader’, but that he has been restrained. We would probably not have expected very much else, given the president does not have many constitutional powers relative to some other semi-presidential presidents. However, the overview is interesting, I think.

The second report speculates as to whether the next presidential election scheduled for 2012 will result in a period of cohabitation. The interest lies not so much perhaps in the speculative content, but in the fact that a Turkish commentator explicitly discusses Turkey in the context of other semi-presidential countries and that term ‘cohabitation’ is openly used. Hear, Hear to both points.