Most powers are held with the prime minister and the president largely serves a ceremonial role.
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With these results, the AKP has leeway to form a single party-government.
The AKP lost its majority in June polls. In early October, about 100 people were killed in Ankara by suicide bombings believed to be conducted by ISIL.
Turkey’s ruling party, the Justice and Development Party (AKP), won a national election over the weekend. More than 385,000 police patrolled the streets for the nine hours of voting.
“Turnout is one of the highest in the country’s history. Over 87 per cent of the people have turned out”, said freelance journalist Dorian Jones, reporting for CBC from Istanbul.
“I surrender myself to AK party without questioning it for what it has done for this country”.
That worry stems from the prospect of Erdogan – who has ruled Turkey for 13 years as prime minister and, later, as president – gaining still more power.
“All elections are about power, obviously, but absolute power is at the heart of this one”.
However, despite the AKP’s surprising sweep to victory and parliamentary majority on Sunday, it still won’t be easy for the party to pass the constitution it wants. A few of those were “shy” AKP supporters who favor stability but are embarrassed to affiliate with the party’s authoritarian leadership publicly, Cagaptay said, while others were simply “appalled by the HDP’s inability to distance themselves from the PKK”, whose decades-long armed struggle is controversial among Kurds.
‘We have both publicly and privately raised our concerns about freedom of the press, freedom of speech and freedom of assembly in Turkey, ‘ said Earnest. Bringing a new constitution to a referendum requires 330 votes – an easy number for the AKP to reach with a few defections from the opposition. When it could not, new elections were called and on Sunday, Erdogan snagged the gold ring.
Support for the pro-Kurdish HDP hovered just over the 10% threshold needed to enter parliament – a threshold it cleared in June’s election – but HDP leaders claimed the election conditions this time were unfair.
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Erdogan on Monday declared the outcome a vote for “stability” after renewed conflict with Kurdish rebels and a wave of bloody jihadist attacks, and called on the entire world to respect the result. The party leader Selahattin Demirtas judged the elections unfair citing the violence that occurred during the campaign. “My wish is that a great hope for peace and calm emerges (from the vote)”. Turkey’s political parties have previously agreed on aspects of a new constitution that would prevent military coups, for instance, but are split when it comes to sticky issues like Turkish identity and citizenship.
