Why did it become controversial? “If the government maintains its pressure on the media, by the time we get to the next election in 2019, there might be no TV channel to cover the opposition party programmes”, says Ceren Sozeri, a media expert at Galatasaray University.
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Those who voted for the AKP, the writer said, did so because they appreciate the party’s economic achievements.
But didn’t Turkey have another general election only recently? It won the AKP the support of voters.
Kalin said the country could hold a referendum on the constitution after consultations with the different political parties. The five-month term of the outgoing Parliament was the shortest in Turkey’s history. And to the shock and dismay of many national and worldwide observers, AKP’s cynical gamble of introducing a climate of doom and gloom worked in the party’s favour as it emerged a clear victor with nearly fifty percent of the votes in Sunday’s election. The Istanbul Stock Exchange jumped 5% on 2 November.
Turkish citizens opted for the stability of a single party government on 1 November. Between March 2003 and June 2015, Turkey was largely peaceful, but this situation changed dramatically after the elections that produced the hung House.
The outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) said Thursday the cease-fire it declared with Turkey ahead of the country’s elections is over.
Turkish war planes pounded PKK targets in the southeastern Kurdish-majority town of Yuksekova on Wednesday, the army said, the third straight day of air strikes since the vote. The PKK used IEDs to blow up military convoys.
The PKK and Ankara had agreed to a ceasefire in 2013; Ankara’s military campaign against the PKK ended that deal.
In the vote that gave the absolute majority back to the AKP of President Erdogan only 75 women were elected for the 550 available seats.
“One of fine features of AKP is the fact that it abandoned the chauvinist Kemalist philosophy in Turkey”, Bakhtiar said. With the voter turnout as high as 85 percent the AKP’s performance matches its best results. The HDP may have again proved that the 10% threshold is not an obstacle, but it suffered from being portrayed by the government as a mere extension of the “terrorist organisation”, that is the PKK. They merely reset the stage for continued struggle: the AK Party against the secular cosmopolitan elite; Erdogan against the Kurds; Islamic State against Turkey and the region; and Europe, the United States and even Russian Federation standing by nervously, assessing the potential impact on their regional interests.
ISIL is believed to have been behind the Ankara bombing that killed 102 people.
The PKK said that although many have called for a “non-conflict environment…it is not possible to continue the inaction and ensure a non-conflict in the face of the current policies of the AKP”.
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“I hope the opposition party leaders will all sit together around a table and work on this”. The incident has outraged Kurds throughout the region. Back with a larger mandate, the AKP and Erdogan should take the initiative on a Syrian peace process. It grew an average of more than 6% a year during the first half of the AKP’s 12 years in power, but slowed to about 3% in the second half.
