Ankara’s taxi drivers are happy. Business is brisk. Hordes of men and women are busying themselves with appointments in party headquarters, in the corridors of the bureaucracy as well as at a multitude of restaurants throughout Ankara.

Thousands of hopefuls test their chances over the potential to take a seat in the next Parliament. It is truly amazing but Ankara is slowly warming up to the presidential as well as the general elections.

There seems to be a growing convention that Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoðan is today more likely to become Turkey’s next president than he was a few months ago. Equally, similar consensus is forming among Justice and Development Party (AK Party) deputies that the presidency is really a job best suited to two AK Party members, namely Prime Minister Erdoðan or Foreign Minister Abdullah Gül. The first group of AK Party deputies, speaking with the prime minister, made it clear that anyone other than these two names is likely to produce discomfort within the party. This is of course bad news for presidential hopefuls such as State Minister Mehmet Aydýn, Defense Minister Vecdi Gönül and State Minister Beþir Atalay.

Back to the candidacy traffic. It is public knowledge that thousands of people will be applying to become AK Party candidates for the next general elections. Businessmen from Ýstanbul, almost every undersecretary in the bureaucracy, as well as many others from the outer circles of the Turkish polity are preparing to become AK Party candidates. It will be a very difficult process and there is no doubt that the AK Party leadership will have to make some tough choices in the coming months. I can assure you that there will be a lot of unhappy men and women on the day following the declaration of candidates for the election. The current AK Party deputies are also worried. All of them want to know whether or not the party leadership will put them up as candidates again. Yet the latest rumors indicate that 30 to 40 percent of current AK Party deputies will not make it.

Most candidates want to see who the next president will be and what that will mean for the future of their respective parties. There is no doubt that once the next president is elected the parties will become very busy as all of them will try to get the best possible candidates. This is particularly true for the True Path Party (DYP) and the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP). The DYP is particularly vulnerable as it currently does not seem to pass the 10 percent election threshold. More worryingly the rise of the Young Party (GP) seems to be taking most of its toll on the DYP’s voters, not from those of the MHP as was often speculated.

As most of the country is currently fixated on the presidential election I tend to put more emphasis on the general elections. If, as is being speculated, the AK Party will go for early elections, perhaps in August, we will have a very quick post-presidential election period. It is highly likely that right after the next president is elected there will be considerable reaction and tension, but that quickly attention will turn to the general elections. We are in for a very hot summer and there is no doubt that the whole process of the presidential and general election will be a critical test for our democracy. We need to put all of our faith behind the consolidation and normalization of our democracy. All other alternatives look very bleak.