What Turkey’s Election Surprise Says About The Troubled Country

The West has voiced deep concerns about the vote Sunday that returned Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) to power, amid escalating fears that its landslide victory will lead to increasingly authoritarian rule in the Muslim-majority state.

Demirtas said it was not a “fair election” after his party halted campaigning in the wake of the bombings, believed to have been carried out by the Islamic State (IS) group, that targeted pro-Kurdish activists in Ankara in October.

So far he has given few clues about moving in that direction, although Davutoglu signaled in his post-election comments that the party had not abandoned hopes for peace.

The main opposition CHP at 25.2% and the nationalist MHP opposition on 12%.

“I surrender myself to AK party without questioning it for what it has done for this country”.

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

Mousavi said in a statement that the decisive result demonstrated a strong mandate from the people of Turkey “to AK Party to steer the nation to an enlightened future”.

“Erdogan has consolidated his power and will definitely try and have a parliament vote for a new charter to introduce an executive presidential system”, Nihat Ali Ozcan, an analyst at the Economic Policy Research Foundation of Turkey, an Ankara-based think tank, said by telephone.

The OSCE said the “challenging security environment, in particular in the south-east, coupled with a high number of violent incidents, including attacks against party members and campaign staff, as well as on party premises, hindered contestants’ ability to campaign freely”.

Erdogan had called for a new election after Davutoglu failed to form a coalition with any of the three opposition parties in parliament after the June vote.

Mr Erdogan presented this month’s election as a chance to restore stability amid growing tensions with Kurdish fighters and the worsening war in neighbouring Syria leaving Turkey with more refugees from there than anywhere else in the world.

In Germany, a spokesman for Chancellor Angela Merkel said it was now important for Turkey to tackle challenges including fighting IS militants, solving the Kurdish conflict and overcoming polarization “in the spirit of national unity and readiness to compromise”.

Although a corruption scandal past year involving many of Erdogan’s closest allies and the June election setback seemed to suggest his star was on the wane, he has shown that he has a knack for speaking for ordinary Turks, particularly outside the capital and Istanbul. “Lives were lost”, said Selahattin Demirtas, the leader of the HDP, after he voted Sunday.

The HDP favours the resumption of peace efforts to end the Kurdish conflict.

The result will permit Mr. Erdogan to remain the country’s pre-eminent political figure while pushing the boundaries of the constitutional limits of the presidency, a largely ceremonial role.