ANKARA (Sputnik) — Turkey urgently needs to adopt a new constitution, which is a number one priority for the country, President Tayyip Recep Erdogan said Saturday.
"First we should materialize a constitution change. I think that the recent steps are important," Erdogan said, speaking at the opening of the fall parliamentary session, as quoted by the Hurriyet Daily newspaper.
In July, following the military coup attempt in the country, Prime Minister Binali Yildirim said that the works on the draft of the new constitution had already begun.
The Turkish president seeks to hold a referendum to abandon the parliamentary system established in Turkey by the 1923 Constitution in favor of an executive presidency. The country's opposition is against Erdogan's proposal accusing him of attempts to establish the individual power regime.