Ankara – Turkish Prime Minister and Chairman of the Justice and Development (AK) Party, Ahmet Davutoglu will return the mandate to form a government to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Tuesday after the collapse of coalition talks with two parties.

According to Prime Minister’s Office, Davutoglu is due to meet Erdogan at 7.30 p.m. (1630 GMT) at the presidential palace in Ankara.

Erdogan had asked Davutoglu to form a new government on July 9. Since then, the four parties represented in the parliament — AK Party, Republican People’s Party (CHP), Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) and Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) — have been searching for a coalition agreement.

The AK Party began talks with the CHP on July 13, and after a month of negotiations, the process dissolved on August 13 without the parties reaching a compromise.

Davutoglu then sought out the MHP for a government, but the talks proved short-lived after the leaders announced there was no agreement following a two-hour meeting.

When the deadline to form a government expires on Aug. 23, either Erdogan or the parliament may decide to hold a new election. If the president issues the decision, then polling is supposed to be held in the first Sunday following a 90-day period starting from the end of the first deadline.

Turkey now seems set for a rerun of the June 7 general election that saw no party achieve a simple majority in parliament.

Any new poll is likely to take place in late November, although Turkey’s election authority has the power to cut the 90-day period by half.

Once the election is decided upon, a caretaker government would usher the country to the polls.

The last coalition talks in Turkey were made 16 years ago, when the Democratic Left Party (DSP) of late premier Bulent Ecevit failed to win the majority in the general election on April 18, 1999.

Since 2002, the AK Party won three general elections to continue a single-party rule for well over a decade, which ended after the June 7 elections this year produced no majority government./AA/