Kurds Central to Turkey Vote

Turkey’s always polarised politics have since turned toxic.

“It is like something out of Antigone [who was forbidden to bury the body of her brother killed in battle]”, says Mr Guler. Aziz’s father has gone to Syria and is refusing to return to Turkey until he can bring his son’s body with him.

Turkish voters rejected the prospect of one-man rule, and at a general election in June this year the AKP lost its majority for the first time since 2002.

Turkey does not want the establishment of a de facto Kurdish polity in northern Syria along its border, given the new haven this would provide for the separatist PKK.

To continue to exercise his de-facto presidential powers, the AKP would have to win a majority, increasing its share of the vote from 40.9 percent in June to more than 43 percent and retaking a few key marginal provinces to reach 276 out of 550 seats, up from 258.

According to recent polls, Erdoğan’s Islamic-rooted AKP’s popularity has slumped 17.4 % to a record low over the past year due to a staggering rise of inflation and terrorists attacks, namely Turkey’s deadliest terrorist attack which hit Ankara’s train station last week, killing and injuring dozens.

On 10 October another Isis suicide bombing killed 102 people demonstrating for peace in Ankara in Turkey’s worst terrorist attack. If the results are bad, he may look for early elections again. The popular columnist, who has 3.6 million followers on Twitter, had to undergo surgery for his broken nose and ribs.

This week workers were constructing sturdier defences in the forecourt of the building, but there is a sense that all institutions critical of Mr Erdogan are under permanent siege.

Turkey is poised “to do what is necessary” in order to prevent Kurds from declaring autonomy in the Syrian town of Tel Abyad, located near the Turkish border, the country’s President Tayyip Erdogan was quoted by media reports as saying.

In the following weeks, coalition talks between the Islamist AKP and the country’s second and third largest parliamentary blocs – the secular Republican People’s Party (CHP) and far-right Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) – fell apart and snap polls were called for November 1.

But Mr Erdogan has never shown any liking for coalitions or for diluting his own power. But as the Kurds are taking the fight on the ground against IS, they have won the admiration and support of the U.S., which is helping them with weapons and aerial support.

Police armed with water cannon, tear gas, and a court order, forced their way into the headquarters of a media group in Istanbul on Wednesday, just days ahead of fresh parliamentary elections.

The AKP has an overwhelming advantage when it comes to campaigning and influencing the electorate. Its 80 seats, from an area that had previously leaned towards the AKP, left the ruling party with 258 MPs, 18 short of even a simple majority in the 550-member national assembly. Now, the region is preparing for a repeat election in a more sombre and bitter mood.

The Turkish economy no longer produces the spectacular growth seen up to 2012. This is bound to affect the effectiveness of Kurdish operations against IS, as they now have to face two fronts, leading one to wonder if the Turkish government is at all serious about fighting IS. “We don’t know how this will be reflected at the ballot box”, he told Reuters. She hopes that greater stability will improve her chances of employment. The opportunities lie in an increasingly bloody confrontation between IS and the Kurds, spread across Turkey, Iraq and Syria, that might weaken the Kurds. Again, public anger was directed at the government for failing to take sufficient security measures, while AKP-party leader Ahmet Davutoglu and president Erdogan both tried to turn the events to their advantage by accusing all enemies of the Turkish state – from Syrian security forces to the PKK, and the Syrian Kurds to IS – to be behind this attack. Such calculations do not seem to factor in the threat from IS, not only for Turkey but the entire Middle Eastern region. A further advance along the border by the Syrian Kurds might lead Ankara to consider direct military intervention.

The result of the election on Sunday is unpredictable, but it has already unleashed or exacerbated powerful divisive forces.

Erdogan also accused the Syrian Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD) of “ethnic cleansing” in his interview.