Turkey’s Erdogan says new constitution should be priority for parliament

“The will of the people… opted for stability”, Mr Erdogan said.

November 1 marked the AKP’s fourth consecutive election victory since 2002.

But in characteristically pugnacious form, he also attacked the global media and its criticism of him.

When asked how President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan feels about the election victory, Davutoğlu said he had just met with the president and that he also feels enthusiastic about the AK Party regaining the parliamentary majority. “So far I haven’t seen such a maturity from the world”, Mr Erdogan said after attending prayers at a mosque and visiting his parents’ graves.

Observers said the army’s operations in the Kurdish-dominated southeast hampered the ability of the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) to campaign.

Prime Minister and AKP leader, Ahmet Davutoglu, said on Twitter: “Today is a victory for our democracy and our people”. Monday, as the reality of a new Erdogan dominance began to dawn.

For AKP to gain a majority, 276 seats had to be won.

With 60 more seats, the government would have been able to bring in those changes without a referendum. For Taraf, a daily that does not back AKP, the vote is the outcome of the “plan of chaos” implemented by Erdogan after the vote in June.

While the pro-Kurdish HDP crossed the 10% threshold needed to claim seats in parliament, but it got 21 fewer seats than in June’s election.

Renewed fighting between Turkey’s security forces and Kurdish rebels has left hundreds of people dead and shattered an already-fragile peace process.

There is now the hope that the two sides may be spurred to return to peace talks.

Amid this atmosphere, the currency of the state, the Turkish lira, has massively depreciated, threatening the stability of the economy.

But many Turks, including a few former supporters, accuse Erdogan of growing increasingly authoritarian, muzzling the media, tightening his party’s grip on the state and putting religion at the center of politics in violation of Turkey’s secular constitution. In the latest polls, AKP was accused of polarising Turkish voters by renewing conflict with the militant Kurdistan Workers’ Party.

The global community will also be watching Turkey’s policy towards neighbouring Syria, after it was finally cajoled into joining the US-led coalition against IS and launched its own “war on terrorism” against the jihadists, PKK fighters and even US-backed Syrian Kurds.

The UN’s refugee agency said 218,394 migrants and refugees reached Europe by sea last month, nearly as many as the total number of arrivals in 2014.

The government said the two bombers were linked to IS.