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Önder Kutlu & Erhan Örselli & Selçuk Kahraman
The perception of authoritarian and a single-man rule are shaped by the political party
leaders in Turkey. On the other hand, the powerful leaders such as Demirel, Ecevit,
Erbakan, and Türkeş proved ineffective in economic and political terms during the
coalition period of 1970s irrespective of their powerful leadership. In this regard, it is
important to design and build a strong executive organ beyond leadership. In addition
to this, it is argued that the presidential government system can provide strong gov-
ernment alongside strong leadership.
The election of a president by the people and the applicability of the presidential sys-
tem in Turkey are an issue particularly uttered by both political cadres and leaders and
frequently raised in the scientific literature in the last thirty years. With the adoption
of the referendum in 2007 and the election of the president for the first time in the
parliamentary system in 2014, the current government system has begun to be ques-
tioned by all actors. After the failed coup attempt of 15 July, the system debate has
flamed and led the way for the adoption of a presidential system which was initiated
by AKP and MHP with a constitutional change encompassing eighteen articles that
provisioned the decisive referendum of 16 April 2017.
As a matter of fact, various studies are recently conducted regarding the applicability
of presidential system in Turkey. On the other hand, there is a great need to determine
citizens thoughts on the presidential system, systemic expectations and concerns.
Especially, studies over the thoughts of university students who would participate in
business and possibly vote for the first time in their lives with respect to the presiden-
tial system have not been conducted.
The thoughts of the majority, who will vote for the first time and have the right to be
elected by the new regulation, are important in terms of learning the opinions of a
social group with considerable expectations from the society and from the system.
In this respect, this study aims at analyzing the views of university students in Konya
about presidential government system.
Research Medium and Universe
The study is based on a quantitative field research which was designed on a sec-
tional surveying model. A fully structured questionnaire form is used to gather data
as a means. The survey was conducted between the dates 27 and 29 March 2017.
The questionnaire, which will provide necessary data for research, is composed of
two main sections. The first part consists of the questions about determining the
socio-demographic characteristics of the participants and in the second part, there
are questions to measure participants’ political positioning of themselves and percep-
tions of the presidential government system based on the five-way Likert scale
