THE man who dominates Turkish politics, and has done so for 12 years, is not running in the general election on June 7th. As president since August, Recep Tayyip Erdogan is meant to stay above the fray. Yet the vote is still all about him. He is campaigning for the Justice and Development (AK) party that he founded to win a majority large enough to change the constitution into one with a strong executive presidency. It is to be hoped that he fails.

As prime minister for over 11 years Mr Erdogan notched up many achievements. The economy was mostly stabler and growth steadier than in the 1990s. He tamed Turkey’s coup-prone generals and its aggressively secularist establishment. In October 2005 he secured the prize of opening negotiations to join the European Union. He pushed Turkey into a more active foreign-policy role in the Middle East. And he has come closer than any predecessor to making peace with the country’s 15m restless Kurds.

But these achievements are now looking less impressive. Growth has slowed sharply, the lira is under pressure and investors are fretting about a coming bust, not least because Mr Erdogan has attacked the independent central bank. He has failed to liberalise the economy. The EU talks seem to be going nowhere. The Kurdish peace process has stalled. And his vaunted foreign policy has failed (see article).

Mr Erdogan has become increasingly intolerant, nationalist and autocratic, especially since a harsh crackdown on protests in Istanbul’s Gezi Park two years ago. Opponents have been hassled. The internet has been censored. Journalists have been silenced or jailed: Turkey comes an embarrassing 149th out of 180 countries for press freedom. When police and prosecutors began a corruption probe in late 2013 that touched not just senior ministers but also Mr Erdogan’s own family, he responded by firing or reassigning them and taking greater control over the judiciary. Turkey’s institutions are young and relatively weak: checks and balances on a forceful prime minister (or a putative strong president) are all but non-existent.

In the light of all this, an executive presidency partly modelled on France’s sounds like a bad idea. With Mr Erdogan in the job, it could swiftly slide towards authoritarianism. Corruption would be harder to counter. And the EU would lose any interest in Turkish accession.

Potential Putin problem

Turkey does not need a Charles de Gaulle, still less a Vladimir Putin. Instead, it needs greater devolution of power (elected provincial governors would be a good start) and a consensual, not confrontational, approach to constitutional change. So voters should not give AK the supermajority that would allow it to set about such change on its own. Instead, they should back an opposition party.

The two main opposition parties are weak outfits with lacklustre leaders. The strongest opposition figure is Selahattin Demirtas of the small pro-Kurdish People’s Democratic Party (HDP), which is polling close to the 10% threshold that it needs to reach in order to win seats in the national assembly. If it got into parliament, there would be a double benefit: the way the political maths work, Mr Erdogan would probably have to abandon the executive presidency, and the Kurdish peace process would gain a welcome boost. Turks should give their votes to the HDP.