With a stunning and unexpected comeback, the Islamist party of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan took back its majority in parliament in Sunday’s re-run general election, ensuring his continuing dominance over Turkish politics.
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According to preliminary results compiled by Anadolu Agency, the AK Party secured 317 seats at the 550-seat Grand National Assembly, increasing its vote rate by 8.61 points.
The AK Party clinched victory after securing over 49 percent of the vote in Sunday’s poll – a rerun of June’s election that saw no party win a majority.
Turkish stocks and the lira soared on the results, which ended the political uncertainty stoked by the inconclusive June vote, but many were wary of further polarisation under a more powerful AKP.
“Today is a day of victory, but a day to be modest”, he said in brief remarks before going to visit the tomb of Celalluddin Rumi, the mentor of Turkey’s main Sufi religious order, the Mevlana, often called the dervishes. “This should be respected by the whole world, but I have not seen such maturity”, the president said Monday.
There were no allegations of large-scale fraud.
Speaking to thousands of people who waited for hours in the cold to hear him speak from the balcony of AKP headquarters in Ankara, he vowed to protect the rights of all of Turkey’s 78 million people.
Turkey has also suffered from terror attacks, including twin bombings in Ankara that constituted the deadliest single terrorist attack on Turkish soil, that have been blamed on the terror group.
The OSCE added that in the two weeks leading up to Sunday’s vote, there was “an increased number of attacks against and arrests of members and activists, predominantly from the People’s Democratic Party (HDP)”.
And the third reason is that AKP, unlike other parties in Turkey, has been all this time focusing on the country’s economic development.
Yesterday, the European Union’s chief diplomat Federica Mogherini and EU commissioner Johannes Hahn issued a joint statement praising the strong voter turnout of more than 85 per cent as a sign of the Turkish people’s commitment to democracy.
The polls were held amid instability spilling over to Turkey from neighbouring Syria and renewed tensions over the 30-year-old Kurdish conflict.
The lira’s recovery Monday came following a bad year. That willratchet up the costs for Turkish companies, many of whom have borrowed in dollars to fund their expansion.
Three Kurdish rebels also died on Tuesday after clashes erupted with security forces in two areas of the restive southeast, the first reported deaths in PKK ranks since the election.
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Speaking from Gaza City, Sami Abu Zuhri, a spokesman for Hamas said that “We in Hamas consider that these results before it being a victory for Turkey, it is a victory to Palestine because we trust that Turkey places results in favor of the service of the Palestinian cause, Jerusalem cause and for the Palestinian people”.
