Turkey Votes -- The Power of the Ballot Box

Turkish voters said "No" to President Tayyip Erdogan's hopes of assuming greater powers. Erdogan suffered a major setback yesterday when the ruling AK Party he founded failed to win an outright majority in a parliamentary election for the first time since he and the AKP came to power in 2002. Erdogan, Turkey's most popular, but also its most divisive, modern leader, had hoped a blowout victory for the AKP would allow him to change the constitution and create a more powerful presidency. To do that, the AKP would have needed to win two-thirds of the seats in parliament. Instead, it lost so many seats that it will be unable to govern alone. It now faces the difficult prospect of negotiating with reluctant opposition parties, if it is to form a stable coalition government and avoid the possibility of an early election. ~~~~~ With Sunday's outcome, Erdogan's hopes of assuming greater powers through his ruling Islamic-rooted Justice and Development Party (AKP) were dashed, even though the AKP won the most votes. Based on 98% of votes counted : the AKP secured 41% of the vote, followed by the Republican People's Party (CHP) at 25%, the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) at 16% and the pro-Kurdish People's Democratic Party (HDP) at 13%. Voter turnout was 86%. The results mean that the HDP easily passed Turkey's 10% threshold for winning parliamentary seats, which was one of the main question marks before the election. According to the official seat projection, the AKP will have 259 seats in the 550-seat parliament, the CHP 131, the MHP 82 and the HDP 78. ~~~~~ The AKP tried to put a positive spin on the results. Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, leader of the AKP, told a crowd of supporters at AKP headquarters : "Everyone should see that the AKP is the winner and leader of these elections. No one should try to build a victory from an election they lost," The AKP's failure to win an overall majority marks an end to more than a decade of stable single-party rule and is a setback for both Erdogan and Davutoglu. Both men had portrayed the election as a choice between a "new Turkey" and a return to short-lived coalition governments, economic instability and coups by a military, whose influence Erdogan has now reined in. Sinan Ulgen, visiting scholar at Carnegie Europe and chairman of the Istanbul-based Center for Economics and Foreign Policy Studies, told Reuters : "Erdogan is the main loser given that he championed two big ideas : one a switch to a presidential system, the other single-party government. Neither of them came about." And, the uncertainty about the AKP being able to form a coalition sent the Turkush lira currency to a record low against the dollar today, and the Turkish stock market was down 5%, as investors positioned themselves for what is likely to be a turbulent week. ~~~~~ But for jubilant Kurds, who flooded the streets of the southeastern city of Diyarbakir setting off fireworks and waving flags, there was celebration. The pro-Kurdish Peoples Democratic Party (HDP) crossed a 10% threshold to enter parliament for the first time. With initial results putting it at 13%, HDP co-leader Selahattin Demirtas ruled out a coalition with the AKP and said the election outcome had put an end to talk of the stronger presidential powers championed by Erdogan. "The discussion of an executive presidency and dictatorship have come to an end in Turkey," he told a news conference in Istanbul, describing the outcome as a victory "for those who want a pluralist and civil new constitution." The celebration came as the HDP, rooted in Kurdish nationalism, succeeded in widening its appeal beyond its Kurdish core to center-left and secularist elements disillusioned with Erdogan. It is now likely to play a significant role in parliament, particularly trying to advance a two-year-old peace process between the Turkish state and the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) militant group, which first took up arms in 1984. The HDP’s successful attempt to break out of ethnic identity politics and broaden its appeal beyond the Kurdish issue owes much to leader Selahattin Demirtas’ popularity and his message of outreach. The mass protest movement that began in a central Istanbul park two years ago and grew into national protests which Erdogan crushed mercilessly also garnered support for the HDP, because of Erdogan's violence and arrests. One HDP activist said : " Just as Erdogan branded the protesters two years ago 'riff-raff, terrorists and foreign agents,' in the election campaign he stoked division and malice by repeatedly smearing his HDP opponents as 'terrorists, marginals, gays....He asked religiously conservative voters not to cast their ballots for 'such people who have nothing to do with Islam.' The tactic backfired as many religiously conservative Kurds shifted their votes from the AKP to a party that promised to represent everyone’s interests.'" Demirtas said earlier that the campaign had not been fair or just. A bombing on Friday killed two people and wounded at least 200 at one of its rallies in Diyarbakir. In addition, women supported the HDP and they will have a larger voice in the 550-seat parliament in Ankara, with 96 members, up from 79. One woman activist said : "we believed in their sincerity when it comes to defending the rights of women, LGBTs and ethnic minorities.” The HDP is the first party to introduce a quota of 50% female politicians, and all party offices and HDP-run municipalities are chaired by both a man and a woman. ~~~~~ Other parties fared well in the election. CNN reported that : (1) the secularist Republican People's Party (CHP) would again be the second biggest group in parliament, with 25% of the vote. Murat Karayalcin, the party's Istanbul chairman, said the outcome was a "clear no" to the executive presidential system championed by Erdogan, while party spokesman Haluk Koc ruled out a coalition with the AKP; and, (2) the right-wing Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), long seen as the AKP's most likely partner in any coalition, took 16% of the vote. Its leader, Devlet Bahceli, all but ruled out a deal with the AKP, saying Turkey should hold a new election if the ruling party was unable to agree a coalition with other opposition parties. "The first possibility...should be between AKP and HDP. The second model can consist of AKP, CHP and HDP," he said. "If all these scenarios fail, then early elections must be held." ~~~~~ A senior AKP official also said a coalition with the MHP was unlikely, and that the ruling party would rather go it alone and try to build support back up ahead of a new, early election. "If there is an AKP-MHP coalition, then we wil not be able to achieve even this level of votes at the next election," the official said. ~~~~~ Dear readers, the first reaction from Erdogan to yesterday's results was to say that Turkey is now entering an uncertain period of coalition government : “Our nation’s opinion is above everything else,” Erdogan said in his first public reaction to the parliamentary elections that took away 10% from the governing party and put a liberal pro-Kurdish party in parliament in Ankara for the first time. Erdogan’s conciliatory tone contrasted sharply with the highly polarizing language he used during the campaign. Instead, he said that no party had won a mandate to govern alone and urged all political parties to work towards preserving an environment of confidence and stability in the country. But no conciliatory words could hide the fact of the stunning voter backlash against his increasingly authoritarian rule. Turkey has always seemed to need strong executive rule, whether civilian or military, to keep order in its government's volatile parliament. But, Erdogan's attempt to turn Turkey from an unruly parliamentary system into a strongman presidency dictatorship based in a constitution that 'Erdogan the Strongman' would write himself was breath-taking, even for Turkey. People don't normally vote themselves into a dictatorship. Such votes are always rigged by strongmen who frighten and coerce voters with nightmare visions of economic or social catastrophe - the March 1933 election of Germany's Hitler after he had seized power and suppressed all opposition comes to mind - and just to be sure of victory, would-be dictators rig the votes. But, Erdogan was apparently so sure of his conservative, almost Islamist, message that he forgot to rig the votes. The result was predictable. People free to vote their conscience vote for freedom and participatory self-government. The Turkish people did just that yesterday. As one Turkish headline put it this morning : "The ballot-box revealed the ballot-box." Now the hard work of making that vote reality begins. We wish the Turkish people success and will open our arms to a democratic Turkey.