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An AKP supporter holds a portrait of Recep Tayyip Erdogan as people celebrate outside the party's headquarters in Istanbul. Emrah Gurel/AP/Press Association Images
good news for erdogan
Protests and celebrations as Turkey's ruling party storms to election victory
The Justice and Development Party secured a parliamentary majority in the country’s second election this year.
TURKEY’S PRESIDENT Tayyip Erdogan is celebrating a major victory for his single-party government in the country’s parliamentary election yesterday.
The ruling Justice and Development Party reclaimed the parliamentary majority it lost just five months ago, confounding opinion polls which had predicted another hung parliament.
An emboldened Erdogan said the people of Turkey had voted for “stability” after renewed conflict with Kurdish rebels and a wave of bloody jihadist attacks since the last election in June.
Turkish stocks and the lira soared on the results, which ended five months of political uncertainty, but many were wary about the future of the troubled country under a more powerful AKP.
“The will of the nation has shown itself in favour of stability,” Erdogan told reporters after morning prayers at an Istanbul mosque.
He called for Turks to “remain united” and said the entire world should respect the result.
His Islamic-leaning conservative party won almost half the vote to secure 316 seats in the 550-member parliament according to final but unofficial results, easily enough to form a government on its own.
‘What is awaiting us?’
AKP supporters honked their horns in celebration but many Turks greeted the result with dismay, and clashes erupted briefly in the main Kurdish city between police and angry demonstrators.
“I’m horrified. I don’t want to live in this country anymore because I don’t know what is awaiting us,” said Guner Soganci, 26, a waitress in Istanbul.
The AKP lost its majority for the first time in 13 years in June, when the pro-Kurdish People’s Democratic Party (HDP) entered parliament for the first time.
The political landscape has changed dramatically since then, with the country even more divided along ethnic, religious and political lines.
Analysts said it appeared voters had turned away from the nationalist and Kurdish parties after a surge in violence between Turkish forces and the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) in July led to the collapse of a fragile 2013 truce.
Turkey was also rocked by a string of attacks blamed on the Islamic State group, including twin suicide bombings at an Ankara peace rally last month that killed 102 people – the bloodiest in Turkey’s modern history.
The international 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.
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