What does a partisan president mean for Turkey?

In a press conference before taking off for Pakistan on Nov. 16, Turkish President Tayyip Erdoğan said he was for a system where the president could keep his (or her) position as the leader - or at least as a member of his or her party.

The partisan president is not in Turkey's constitution now; it suggests that the president should be non-partisan. That is why the party memberships of former presidents like Turgut Özal, Süleyman Demirel and Abdullah Gül were automatically dissolved the day that they were elected as president, regardless of whether they were elected by the parliament or the people.

Erdoğan sees the current system as an obstacle slowing down the executive branch. He says that with a partisan presidential system, the leader will have full influence over the governing party, which would make the legislative work in the parliament become much quicker.

That explanation could have certain risks. It assumes that the current situation of President Erdoğan also being the natural leader of the Justice and Development Party's (AK Parti) government, which itself has a majority status in the parliament, will go on forever. In the event the president and government (also the parliamentary majority) are not from the same party, the partisan presidential system designed to accelerate the executive but leave less space for the checks-and-balances role of parliament could turn the other way around. In such a case, if the president is the leader or a member of the opposition party, it could lock the system. Erdoğan assumes that voters would never want to separate the presidency from the majority group in the parliament.

That is why the executive presidential system, or the partisan presidency system that Erdoğan and Prime Minister...