Turkey’s president on Monday (2 November) demanded respect for his party’s victory in elections marred by a media crackdown and violence. “That’s an illustration of how important the country sees this vote for the opposition parties”. The AKP lost its majority for the first time in 13 years in June, when pro-Kurdish People’s Democratic Party (HDP) entered parliament for the first time.
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Turkey’s current constitution was drafted under military rule decades ago, and was created to limit the power of civilian governments.
There was disappointment for the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which had hoped to join a coalition, and support for the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) also fell.
According to preliminary results, the AK Party secured 49.48 percent of the vote – much more than had been predicted by pollsters – giving it a wide majority (317 out of 550 seats) in parliament.
That confidence has been badly damaged by Erdogan’s interventions over the last two years and will deteriorate again if he treats this victory as permission to further persecute businesses he considers politically hostile. The mention of a “new Turkey” is believed to refer to the strong presidency Erdogan seeks.
“We will all have to show respect to the national will”, he said after voting in Istanbul.
The rally, of leftists and trade unionists, called for an end to fighting between the government and the Kurdish minority, and came after a fragile peace between the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, and the government. If the West is to work with Mr Erdogan – and work with him, to a large degree, it must – then assurances must be given that such a lackadaisical approach to Isis is a thing of the past.
Just weeks before President Barack Obama meets Erdogan in Turkey, spokesman Josh Earnest said the White House was ‘deeply concerned that media outlets and individual journalists critical of the government were subject to pressure and intimidation during the campaign’.
The snap polls were necessary since elections in June had thrown up a hung parliament with AKP losing its previous majority.
In the town of Silvan, militants in the PKK’s youth wing dug trenches on Tuesday to keep police out of a few areas, security sources said, while security forces put three neighbourhoods under curfew, Reuters reported.
Opponents of the AKP and critics of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who sabotaged coalition talks in June because he did not like the election results, suspect the outcome was manipulated.
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Turker Hamzaoglu, a U.K.-based analyst for Bank of America that covers Turkey, commented in a note that the “rather surprising” AKP win was a “surprise” but re-confirms his prior view that political risks in the country have likely peaked.
