ISTANBUL — Turkey will hold elections in June, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan announced Wednesday.

Both presidential and parliamentary elections are being moved forward from November 2019 to June 24 this year — accelerating the country’s shift to a presidential system of government, which critics have described as a blueprint for one-man rule.

“Even though the president and government are working in unison, the diseases of the old system confront us at every step we take,” Erdoğan said, announcing the snap vote in a brief speech in Ankara.

“Developments in Syria and elsewhere have made it urgent to switch to the new executive system in order to take steps for our country’s future in a stronger way,” he said.

The Turkish lira, which has become steadily weaker since January, gained almost 1 percent against the dollar following Erdoğan’s statement.

The snap poll will be held amid rising nationalist sentiment, with Turkey at war in neighboring Syria.

Analysts believe that Turkey’s overheating economy may have forced Erdoğan's hand. Prosperity and growth are key to the president's popularity, and the economy is considered his Achilles’ heel.

Turkey’s economy is still growing fast, with GDP rising by 7.4 percent last year. But the lira has nosedived, hitting a record low of 5.17 to the euro this month, weighed down by double-digit inflation and a surging deficit.

The weak lira drove several Turkish corporate giants to seek debt restructuring in the past few months.

The ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) “realized they cannot run the economy in overdrive until November 2019,” writes economist Timothy Ash, a strategist focusing on emerging markets at BlueBay Asset Management.

Election U-turn

The president and the AKP have repeatedly denied rumors of early elections.

But on Tuesday, the leader of the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) — a small opposition party allied to the AKP — surprised the country by suggesting a snap vote on August 26.

MHP leader Devlet Bahçeli said there was “no point in prolonging this any longer,” referring to Turkey’s shift from a parliamentary system to an executive presidency.

In April last year, Erdoğan narrowly won a constitutional referendum on the changes, which will grant the president sweeping powers. The new system was slated to come into effect with elections in November 2019.

Erdoğan’s announcement came shortly after he met Bahçeli on Wednesday. The AKP entered an alliance with the ultranationalist MHP after the June 2015 election, when the ruling party briefly lost its majority before regaining it in a snap vote months later.

In 2015, it was Bahçeli who first called for an early election — as he had done in 2002, the year Erdoğan and the AKP rose to power.

The snap poll will be held amid rising nationalist sentiment, with Turkey at war in neighboring Syria. The Turkish military last month drove Syrian Kurdish fighters — who are allies of Washington but considered terrorists by Ankara — from the enclave of Afrin in northern Syria.

A new opposition

Erdoğan’s choice of June 24 as the day of the vote gave rise to speculation that he was seeking to exclude opposition politician Meral Akşener and her newly-founded Iyi Party (Good Party), considered a major threat to Erdoğan’s hold on power, from participating in the votes.

Akşener split from the MHP and founded the Iyi Party last year. Polls have suggested that the new group, which has positioned itself on the center right, may siphon off voters from the AKP. Akşener intends to run for president against Erdoğan.

Turkey’s electoral rules stipulate that a party must hold a founding congress at least six months before the elections it wants to contest. The Iyi Party held a congress in early December.

But some, including the vice president of the largest opposition party CHP, have suggested that the Iyi Party’s April congress was the party’s first official meeting, excluding it from a June election.

And on Tuesday, the party’s general secretary said the necessary paperwork had been submitted on December 28, enabling the Iyi Party to take part in elections held after June 28 — two days after the snap vote called by Erdoğan.

Holding elections in June was a shrewd move on the government’s part, said Atilla Yeşilada, a political analyst at the consultancy firm GlobalSource Partners in Istanbul.

“Summer is always the best time for the Turkish economy,” he said. “People don’t use heating and food is cheaper, and there are tourism revenues.”

Erdoğan leads in the presidential election polls, but may fall short of a majority in the first round.

But the snap vote doesn't necessarily mean good news for Turkey’s economy, he said. Polls do not show a clear-cut victory for any party, creating greater uncertainty for investors.

Surveys for parliamentary elections have put the AKP at between 40 and 48 percent, with the CHP hovering between 23 and 25 percent. Results for the Iyi Party vary wildly, from around 5 to 20 percent.

Some polls show the smaller opposition parties MHP and the pro-Kurdish HDP failing to reach Turkey’s 10 percent threshold for entering parliament, while others predict they will get enough support.

Erdoğan leads in the presidential election polls, but may fall short of a majority in the first round.

Currency pressure

This unpredictability, Yeşilada said, will likely put further pressure on the lira. Moreover, elections in Turkey traditionally call for a government spending spree — but while such a move may impress voters, it’s likely to backfire in the long run.

“A lot of investors are worried about the economy overheating,” Yeşilada said. “If they get the impression that before the elections the economy will be heated to boiling point, which expands the current account deficit and raises inflation, they might pull their money out of Turkey.”

Economists say that Turkey’s central bank must raise interest rates to reassure investors and halt the depreciation of the lira. The bank’s next meeting is scheduled for April 25.

But Erdoğan, who frequently rails against an ill-defined “interest rate lobby,” has demanded lower rates. A rate hike would curtail growth — anathema to the president, who takes pride in Turkey ranking among the world’s fastest-growing economies.

“Early elections plus the central bank staying put on rates on April 25 would spell calamity for the exchange rate funds,” Yeşilada said. “The lira would immediately depreciate.”

Government critics are also questioning whether the elections can be fair. The vote will be held under a state of emergency, which has been in place since the July 2016 coup attempt and was extended Wednesday.

The opposition complained of irregularities and an uneven playing field in the 2017 referendum campaign, and Erdoğan’s grip on the media and state resources has only grown stronger amid an ever-expanding crackdown on dissent.

“They’re certainly not going to be fair. And I think the groundwork to cheat has been laid,” Yeşilada said of the upcoming votes. “The AKP would prefer an honest victory, but if things go south … well, Erdoğan cannot lose.”