Recep Tayyip Erdoğan tightens grip on power but leftist, pro-Kurdish HDP party passes 10% of vote share, enough to deny president a ‘supermajority’
Turkey’s strongman president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, tightened his grip on power decisively on Sunday as his ruling Justice and Development party (AKP) swept back to single-party government with an unexpectedly convincing win in national elections.
The high-stakes vote, Turkey’s second in five months, took place in a climate of mounting tension and violence following an inconclusive June poll in which the conservative, Islamic-leaning AKP failed to secure an outright majority for the first time since coming to power in 2002.
The result could exacerbate divisions in a country deeply polarised along both ethnic and sectarian lines; Erdoğan is adored by supporters who hail him as a transformative figure who has modernised the country, but loathed by critics who see see him as an increasingly autocratic, even despotic leader.
With 97.4% of votes counted, the AKP had won 49.4%, the state broadcaster TRT reported, giving the AKP at least 315 seats in the 550-member parliament, more than enough to form a government on its own.
The prime minister and AKP leader Ahmet Davutoğlu tweeted simply “Elhamdulillah,” or “Thanks be to God,” before emerging from his family home in the central Anatolian city of Konya to tell crowds of cheering supporters that the win was “a victory for our democracy, and our people”.
Describing the results as a disaster, the main secularist CHP opposition saw its share of the vote slip to 25.4%, some 134 seats, while support for the nationalist MHP party fell sharply to 12% or about 40 seats, compared to 80 in June’s election.
Read more:
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/nov/01/turkish-election-akp-set-for-majority-with-90-of-vote-counted
