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Turkey election: ruling party on course to lose majority
07-06-2015 23:37
Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, suffered his most significant electoral defeat in more than a decade on Sunday when his ruling Justice and Development, or AK, party appeared on course to lose its parliamentary majority – and leaving it in search of a coalition partner in order to form a government.
Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s Justice and Development party is projected to win 41% of vote – meaning it will need a coalition partner to form a government
Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, suffered his most significant electoral defeat in more than a decade on Sunday when his ruling Justice and Development, or AK, party appeared on course to lose its parliamentary majority – and leaving it in search of a coalition partner in order to form a government.
Based on 99% of all votes counted, the AKP secured 41% of the vote, followed by the Republican People’s party (CHP) at 25%, the Nationalist Movement party (MHP) on 16.5% and the pro-Kurdish leftist Peoples’ Democratic party (HDP) fourth at a surprise 12.5%.
Erdoğan, Turkey’s most popular modern leader but also its most divisive, had hoped for a crushing victory for the AKP, to allow it to change the constitution and create a more powerful presidency. Its failure to win an overall majority marks an end to 12 years of uninterrupted, stable single-party rule since it first took power in 2002.
The leftist HDP, the surprise star of this year’s parliament elections, passed Turkey’s unusually high election threshold of 10%.
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The results suggest voters have rejected the ruling party’s attempt to remake the constitution and give more power to Erdoğan, for which it would have needed a two-thirds majority in parliament – or 367 seats. Instead, the AKP appears to have won 258 seats – falling short of the 276 seats required to form a majority government.
The party’s projected share of the vote, at around 41%, is below the 49% it received in the parliamentary elections in 2011.
The atmosphere outside the AKP’s headquarters in Ankara was muted. Several hundred supporters chanted for Erdoğan, the party’s founder, but there was little sign of the massive crowds that gathered under its balcony after past election victories.
We expect a minority government and an early election
Senior AKP official
“We expect a minority government and an early election,” a senior AKP official told Reuters on condition of anonymity.
The AK prime minister, Ahmet Davutoglu, said that the party was the clear winner in the election and vowed to take all necessary measures to prevent harm to Turkey’s political stability.
“Everyone should see that the AKP is the winner and leader of these elections,” Davutoglu said in a speech to supporters from the balcony of the AKP headquarters in Ankara. “No one should try to build a victory from an election they lost.”
Erdoğan was not on the ballot but the election was, in effect, a referendum on whether to give his office extraordinary powers that would significantly change Turkish democracy and prolong his reign as the country’s most powerful politician.
His divide-and-rule method to rally his religious-conservative base has led to increasing polarisation in Turkey, and in some cases to violence.
In the run-up to Sunday’s election, the HDP reported more than 70 attacks on election offices and campaigners across the country. On Friday, two bombs exploded at an election rally in the main Kurdish city of Diyarbakir, killing two and wounding hundreds of others.
“This is the end of identity politics in Turkey,” said Gencer Özcan, professor for international relations at Bilgi University in Istanbul. “The election threshold is not the only barrier that was overcome tonight in the elections, but also emotional and identity barriers have been breached.”
In a major blow to the AKP’s chances to remake the constitution, the Peoples’ Democratic party (HDP) managed to breach the election threshold by garnering over 11% of the national vote and win seats in parliament.
“This is a golden opportunity for the HDP,” said Özcan. “Voters in Turkey endorse democracy in Turkey across identity boundaries.”
The pro-Kurdish HDP runs on a platform defending the rights of ethnic minorities, women, and lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people. In a polling station in the predominantly Kurdish suburb of Dolapdere in Istanbul, Hacer Dinler, 25, said that she had high hopes for the HDP.
theguardian