The Justice and Development Party (AKP) took 49.4 per cent of the vote, a solid majority of 316 seats in the 550-member parliament.
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On Sunday tensions continued when Turkish security forces fired tear gas on Kurdish protesters near Diyarbakir, further labeling Turkey a precarious destination.
The AKP, in a previous vote in June, failed to secure a majority. However, he cautioned that “significant challenges remain” including the Kurdish problem, the need for a new constitution, eroding quality of institutions, and the need for a resumed reform zeal to improve democratic and individual rights. Arguably, a coalition party was indeed the best approach for peacefully governing a myriad of social sub-sects in Turkey, while also helping somewhat to curb Erdogan’s growing grip on power.
Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu spared no time in capitalizing on his party’s stunning parliamentary election win Monday and called for redrafting the constitution to transform governance to a presidential system.
Turkey has also been the target of two Islamic State-linked suicide bomb attacks that killed more than 130 people. Despite having more votes than HDP, the MHP has just won 40 seats, losing almost half of its deputies compared to June.
“Unfortunately we come to the conclusion that this campaign was unfair, and was characterized by too much violence and fear”, said Andreas Gross, a Swiss parliamentarian and head of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe delegation. “We were not able to lead an election campaign, we tried to protect our people against attacks”, he said. Turkey shares is borders with Syria, Iraq, Iran, Armenia, Bulgaria, and Greece. The stakes for the peace process are high for the region. According to a 2011 United Nations report, non-sexual physical violence committed by intimate partners was 10 times more likely in Turkey, which aspires to join the European Union, than in a few European countries. And Erdogan continues to have flirtations with eccentric economic thinking: There have been signs, for example, that he would like to replace Turkey’s widely respected economic team with one more open to pet ideas such as the notion that raising interest rates causes inflation.
First and foremost Turkey is a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and was a staunch ally of the USA during the Cold War.
More than 54 million people were eligible to vote at more than 175,000 polling stations.
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“The people wanted calm, they wanted security, they didn’t want their peace disturbed”, Kurtulmus said. And this is still the same president who used tear gas and water cannons to suppress the peaceful Gezi Park protests in 2013. The left-wing daily Taraf accuses President Erdogan of using a “chaos plan” to whip up public insecurity, and the pro-Kurdish Ozgur Gundem predicts a “new era of struggle”. That now appears to have been a good bet.
